


I would rather be a bird without wings (than a bird without feet)

by 62miles



Series: Call of the Void [1]
Category: SHINee
Genre: Angst, Kibum is awesome, M/M, Nobody Dies, Science Fiction, Suicidal Thoughts, but more about dealing with trauma and poverty and broken dreams than science, though terribly written science fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4453085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/62miles/pseuds/62miles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost hungrily, Jinki runs his eyes over those familiar features. He scoots close and closer still, close enough to obscure Minho's face with his own shadow, close enough to imagine he can feel the soft rush of air as Minho breathes out.</p><p>He blinks and he sees the lithe boy under the sun. The paper plane, the ear-to-ear grin.</p><p>This Minho doesn't grin like that, no. This Minho has an older face, a wearier face, a different texture. More weathered. Sharper angles, steeper planes. And this Minho—it hits him like a punch to the gut—this Minho has folds at the corners of his eyes. The beginnings of wrinkles. That's right. It's December again. Minho is turning twenty-eight; he is turning thirty. They've spent all their youth, exhausted their dreams, their happiness, their we'll-do-better-next-year-and-make-it-happen. They're no longer boys.</p><p>An yet, and yet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Something from 2012 this time (SSS 2012), though I think my muse made me selfish in terms of the world that was to be built and it was a disappointment. Even so, it was a strange but exhilarating writing experience because despite it being one of the longest pieces of fiction I've written, the story literally poured itself out in a very short period of time. At some point even I didn't know what was going to happen until the words showed up before my eyes.
> 
> This version on AO3 will be a rewritten version of the original, though I hesitate to use the word "rewritten" since I can't be sure of the extent of revisions. I do hope to smooth out the wrinkles somewhat. I can only post in pieces, but this story was not written with chapters in mind.

  
  
  
  
  
He hears his own breath.  
  
It's loud and raspy, too ragged around the edges, an ugly sound.  
  
  
  
He looks down, down over the lip of the abandoned mine shaft, and he fights the vertigo. He knows it's a good two three hundred yards before there is even an interruption to the way these sheer walls drop away toward the core of the planet. He knows, but he can't see it; even the light dies before getting that far.  
  
His heart pumps harder.  
  
Today, the opening looks a little less like the gaping mouth of a monster and more like a grave. Like the end. Like resolution, absolution. Something to be embraced rather than feared. Like promises of something different, something better.  
  
He closes his eyes and his one good hand tightens over the metal railing.  
  
  
  
But it's looser today, his hand.  
  
Looser than all the other days.  
  
  
  
 _Coward, coward, you're such a coward!_ He hears the voice in his bad ear, the ear that he's not supposed to hear sound with. _You're a coward, a useless, useless coward!_ The next breath shudders and gurgles inside of him.  
  
  
  
  
And he lets go.  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
  
  
_Year 157 PC, December 6_  
Third Earth, Jorth: upper second principal meridian, district four  
  
  
  
  
  
"Well _shit_."  
  
  
Minho drops his head into his hands. The waitress walking by barely spares him a glance. There's an uproar of laughter on the other end of the diner.  
  
Jonghyun puts down his glass and extends an arm across the table, trying to pat his friend's shoulder in consolation. But before he manages to get that far, Minho swats his hand away and snaps his head up, fury written across his face.  
  
The shorter man nurses his sore hand and complains: "Ow man, you didn't have to—"  
  
  
"Fuck. You."  
  
  
Jonghyun shuts up with a twist of his mouth because he knows his friend means it. And it's not good to mess with Minho when he has a steak knife—or well, _two_ steak knives, and two forks on top of that—within easy reach. Then there are the plates. It's a cheap local joint so the china has lost its glaze but hell it looks sturdy enough to—  
  
  
" _Shit!_ " Minho drops his head back down and squeezes the syllable out between his teeth. "Shit shit shit..."  
  
  
Jonghyun tries to smile but it wobbles. He scratches the back of his neck.  
  
"Look man, I know it's bad—"  
  
"Bad? You think _bad_ covers this?" Minho's upper lip is curled back and his eyes are wider than Jonghyun has ever seen them. "You've fucked me over with this shit, don't you understand? You could have plowed me down a million times over with a hovercar—good Jorth, a hover _tank_ —and it would have been better."  
  
Jonghyun gulps a little unnaturally.  
  
"Fuck. Why the hell did I let you convince me into thinking it was going to turn out well?"  
  
"You needed the money and—"  
  
"Yeah, and now I'm in more debt than I was to begin with and have no way to pay it back, and that is _not_ fucking okay."  
  
"—which is why I said I know it's bad—"  
  
"It's more than bad!"  
  
"—hey, would you let me finish one sentence—"  
  
" _Shit._ "  
  
  
  
Jonghyun hears what he thinks are tears in his friend's voice and that brings a entirely different sort of gravity to the situation.  
  
  
  
  
"Shit."  
  
It falls softly from Minho's mouth onto his half-finished plate.  
  
  
  
  
Then without warning, he grabs his jacket and stalks towards the entrance of the diner.  
  
"Look I'll pay for dinner!" Jonghyun scrambles around and shouts belatedly after his friend. A pang shoots through him when he sees the stoop to the younger man's shoulders. He hurriedly pulls a few crumpled coffee-stained notes from his pocket and drops them next to the automated salt and pepper shakers. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a waitress approaching and flashes her his signature grin.  
  
"Sweetheart, we're done over here. The money is on the table and you're welcome to keep the change, er—" he peeks discreetly at her name tag. "—Soojung #9-24."  
  
Then he looks her up and down.  
  
"Aren't you a little too young to be out of school?"  
  
Before the android could open her mouth, he's flying out the door into the wintry air.  
  
  
  
  
  
Jonghyun whips his head to the left and then to the right. He spots Minho—with his height and his mop of conservatively black hair, he has always been rather easy to pick out of a crowd—down the street, waiting for the pedestrian signal.  
  
"Wait!" He ignores the stares he gets and breaks out into a run.  
  
The walk signal comes on when he's only three strides into his sprint, so it takes him another block before he catches up to Minho. Propped up by his hands on both of his knees, he gasps: "Wait man, look, I'm _sorry_ okay? I didn't know the thing would fall through either. I swear to Jorth—to Kishar, if it makes you feel better—I didn't bring you in to screw you over. I put some of my own money on it and now I've got to tighten my belt too."  
  
Minho doesn't look at him, doesn't even blink. There's something ice cold about his red-rimmed eyes. "Well unlike you, I've got more than just myself to support."  
  
"More than just..." Jonghyun quickens his steps to keep up with Minho. "Oh you mean the—" his left arm droops and he pretends to limp "—what's his name— _whoa_ —"  
  
Minho pulls up short and grabs Jonghyun by the scarf that's haphazardly wrapped around his neck. He walks the other man backwards until he's pressed up against the storefront window of a boutique selling authentic vintage keyboards and computer parts.  
  
" _How_ many times do I have to fucking tell you _not_ to do that?!"  
  
"Hey, hey, put me down! I know you work out and shit, no need to show it off." The shorter man throws up his hands, finding the ground with his toes. He struggles, but to no avail. "And look, we're friends, but I'm not friends with him. I've got no obligation to be nice!"  
  
  
Jonghyun stares back for a few defiant seconds before his eyes darken and his expression turns solemn. He settles his hand over Minho's; the gesture makes the other man flinch.  
  
  
"If anything, yeah, I dislike the guy, okay?"  
  
  
The taller man's breathing turns unsteady, but Jonghyun doesn't take the hint.  
  
  
"Because we all know that if it weren't for _him_ , you wouldn't be stuck here on this shitty planet doing an office job you hate and having to bow your head to those jackasses when _they_ should be the ones dreaming about polishing _your_ shoes. If it weren't for him, Ahn Chilhyun would have taken you to Second Earth and by Kishar, the opportunities from there on..."  
  
He whistles low and loud.  
  
"There's no way those Gatekeepers along the Janus Corridor would have ever shut you out. And after getting past Janus? Laurea, Caleo, Libens, Messis—name a system, name a planet, the whole of Novus would have been your fucking personal _oyster_. All the riches of the wealthiest Orbis State would have been laid at your feet, if only for you to spit at them. Fan and Zitao got their ticket to paradise at your expense, but everyone who has ever seen you fly know you're the absolute fucking _best_. That contract should have been yours!"  
  
  
Minho shakes like a leaf in the wind.  
  
  
"Novians look down on us because we're from Regio, jolly old no man's land. They think we're an unpleasant scribble in the margins of their greatness. Or worse yet, they think we're all vagrants and criminals, _ghosts_ , un-Marked and absent from their all holy Registry and thus not even human in the eyes of the law. Never mind that Regio is the land of their own ancestors, never mind that their government refuses to give us even a single reotaler of aid but insists on Marking all our children at birth. _It's to set apart the illegals_ , they say. _We Mark our own just the same_ , they say. Well _bullshit_. But you ask them how many leapers out of all their fleets can fly those interstellar ships without needing proto-lenses to see, huh? How many of them can fault-slip without costing their employer or their Orbis State a fortune? Without a mapper chair flying for them ahead of time just so they won't strand themselves in orphaned space or break their little necks hitting a cliff?"  
  
  
Jonghyun's eyes are bright, but he doesn't get an answer.  
  
  
"Your eyes, Choi Minho. You were born to be up there, _out_ there, in space! In fucking glorious Novian space!" He exclaims. "You've wanted it all your life and it should have been yours. It _would_ have been—"  
  
" _He_ didn't take anything away from me!"

  
Minho's tightening fist betrays his air of dead calm.

  
" _I_ was the one—" he swallows and his composure begins to crack "—I was the one. I let him get hurt, and then I made a ghost out of him. I knew he wanted it as much as I did and I knew ghosts don't even get to leave the planet, much less go to Novus. I knew that before I begged Heechul for help. So I can't think about flying, Jonghyun, I can't. I can't fly. I—"  
  
"No no no, you've got this all wrong." Jonghyun pries Minho's fingers loose and covers Minho's mouth to keep him from talking too loudly. He glances around a little nervously at the passers-by before putting down his hand and hissing. "For one, that was a freak accident. No one knew that new kid Jiho would panic and lose control of the simulation unit and crash into him. And second, you saved his life! He was already _blue_ for fuck's sake, his Mark had shut his body down and declared him dead, so getting blacked out? Yeah see, that's better than being actually dead, and I bet he thinks so too."  
  
"But I wasn't thinking about him when I made the decision! It wasn't about him. It was about _me_ , me not wanting to lose him, me needing a chance to atone. I wasn't thinking about whether or not he would want this. About how he would feel, waking up a ghost, terminated from the Registry, dead to his family, trapped on Jorth, half of his body ruined, and everything we'd been working toward just...just...gone. If it were me I think I would rather—" Minho pauses, surprised at what slips out of his mouth. "Oh. Oh, fuck, Jonghyun, what if he'd wanted to die?"  
  
"But he has _you_." Jonghyun raises his voice a little. "He has always had you. You guys have been joined at the hips since you were twelve or something! That matters."  
  
Minho only shakes his head, pale as a sheet.  
  
  
  
"It's been what, seven eight years now?"  
  
The taller man looks tired and sad and defeated.  
  
  
  
"It's been more than seven." Jonghyun sniffs loudly and claps his friend on the arm. "You've done enough."  
  
Minho tries to laugh. "Nothing's ever gonna be _enough_."  
  
"I thought you were past all this so I never sat you down for a talk, but now I'm thinking maybe we should? Because you've got to forgive yourself."  
  
"Yeah, but he doesn't even know it was _me_." Minho looks—and for a bit Jonghyun feels like rubbing his eyes—frightened as a first-time leaper. "He doesn't know it was my fault."  
  
"Everyone else who wanted to take Jiho down a few notches was just as responsible."  
  
"But Trainer Ahn told _me_ to watch over Jiho. He heard the wrong instructions from my mouth. If I hadn't agreed to trick him, if I hadn't..." Minho's expression contorts. "Jinki doesn't know I set up the whole thing and now this. I haven't even told him we're having money problems. He thinks we're still making ends meet! So how the hell do I tell him on top of _that_ that I took out loans—"  
  
"Wait, I thought what you invested was entirely your own money?"  
  
"Part of it. I scraped together a bit, borrowed from my parents and from people I shouldn't have borrowed from, and I took—" his eyelids flutter shut "—I took some from his fake consolation fund. His savings, the money that he has me wire over to his family every month."  
  
"Good Jorth, the idiot can't lie can he? What kind of consolation payment or insurance payout runs for seven ye—" Jonghyun sees his friend's expression and swallows the rest of his sentence. He tries to look more concerned. "...How much? From him I mean?"  
  
"You said it was gonna be good and quick, so I thought it'd be okay—"  
  
Jonghyun grabs his friend by both shoulders. "How much?"  
  
"Most of it. Almost all of it."  
  
  
  
Minho looks like a child. Helpless.  
  
  
  
  
  
"I didn't tell him, Jjong. I didn't tell him."  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The info-dumping in this chapter is already borderline terrible so here's a glossary, for clarification.
> 
> ► there are three notable regions of space relevant to this story:
> 
> VETUS — includes the original solar system inhabited by humans and hence First Earth (LAR); largely abandoned
> 
> REGIO — where pioneers from LAR first settled; includes Second Earth (KISHAR), which sees much traffic due to its relative proximity to JANUS, and Third Earth (JORTH), a heavy industry-based planet; no proper centralized governance
> 
> NOVUS — a wealthy, stable Orbis State spanning multiple habitable solar systems including JANUS (an exceptionally dense convergence corridor for a multitude of FAULTS, hence the natural gateway to Novus where all travelers are legally required to stop; guarded by military forces ("Gatekeepers")), LAUREA, CALEO, LIBENS, CADENS, MESSIS, etc.
> 
>  
> 
> ► technical terms:
> 
> BLACK OUT — slang for illegally un-MARKing a person
> 
> BLUE — slang for having been shut down by one's own MARK
> 
> FAULT — a rift in space; properties, including stability, vary
> 
> FAULT-SLIP — faster-than-light space-travel made possible by slipping through FAULT systems
> 
> GHOST — slang for an un-MARKed person; also for VETUS vagrants, who are obviously un-MARKed from birth
> 
> HIT A CLIFF — slang for flying yourself into the wall of a FAULT; think of driving into the wall of a tunnel
> 
> LEAPER — slang for a pilot who is fitted for PROTO-LENSES and is licensed to FAULT-SLIP; because the alternative "slipper" is lame for obvious reasons
> 
> MAPPER — a navigator and then some
> 
> MARK — every newborn is Marked on the right side of the head at birth in order to enter the REGISTRY and hence become recognized as human (as opposed to VETUS vagrants, illegal births, androids etc.); e.g. spaceport security verifies Marks as the "passports" of spacebound/earthbound passengers; when a body sustains physical (especially CNS) damage beyond a certain extent, the Mark shuts it down and resuscitative treatment is generally prohibited since this is considered legal death
> 
> ORBIS STATE — the equivalent of a federation, ish
> 
> ORPHANED SPACE — a fault-slip dead end, made possible by unidirectional entry FAULTS that lead to a region without any nearby exit faults; think of a one-way street leading to a cul-de-sac, which is just mean
> 
> PROTO-LENS — expensive and yet still rather primitive exobiotechnology (haha) that plugs into a pilot's MARK to let him perceive certain boundary characteristics of FAULTS in order to avoid HITTING CLIFFS or slipping into obvious NESTED FAULTS; often custom-made and custom-adjusted to reduce the latency between "proto-sighting" and actual perception; they age and wear down over time, and maintenance is generally difficult; rejection is a concern (the lens system may reject the pilot, the pilot's body may reject the lenses, or they may mutually reject)
> 
> REGISTRY — the centralized database of all (MARKed) humans
> 
> REOTALER — the common currency of Regio


	3. Chapter 3

  
  
  
  
  
It's summer, or it smells like summer anyway. That, and the fact that he's in a T-shirt and shorts, because he can feel the grass prickling along his legs. He also feels a hard surface of some sort behind his back, a little too scratchy to be a wall. He turns to look; it's a tree. Ah, that's right. He's sitting in the shade. It explains the multitude of circles swimming over him.  
  
He squints his eyes and looks around.  
  
It hurts; everything's too bright. The sky is a blaze of white and it swallows up the horizon. Even the grass that's a few yards away turns from green to gold before disappearing.  
  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut and covers his face with his left hand.  
  
  
Even then, he can still see it, that blinding expanse. So he presses harder until it hurts in a different way. Phosphenes scatter across the back of his eyelids like the echo from a ping sent straight down a fault. He feels a little better.  
  
  
  
"Hey..."  
  
  
  
He stiffens. The voice is familiar, but somehow too young. Who is—it strikes him then: it's summer, his limbs feel lighter and shorter, he knows the direction of the sound, he's holding up his _left_ hand—  
  
  
  
"What do you think is inside a fault? What would you see when you slip into one?"  
  
  
  
He lowers his hand, trembling. And there is a boy, head pillowed on his lap. He can feel the weight of it, the warmth, the way it tickles when the wind blows soft strands of hair over the skin of his knees. There must be tears in his eyes because everything is out of focus, even the boy's face, but he can still make out the blurry vertical column of the boy's upraised arm. And in the hand at the very end of that long lean arm is an airplane folded out of white paper.  
  
  
  
"What would be in that space? Is it space, if it lets us space-travel?"  
  
  
 _You can't_ see _a fault, silly. Even what proto-lenses let you perceive isn't really sight._  
  
  
"I hope this preliminary training ends soon." The boy fiddles with the wings of the paper plane. "I want to see it for myself, feel it, get to know what it's like. It'd be so cool, don't you think? To fly through the faults. To traverse the diameter of an entire solar system in the span of a few heartbeats."  
  
  
He finds himself nodding. He wants to touch the boy but is afraid to, so he nods.  
  
  
"Hey."  
  
  
He is startled by the sudden warmth enveloping his hand. The boy is grinning, he knows it.  
  
  
"You'll be my mapper, won't you?"  
  
  
Something swells up inside his chest, so much so it feels like he's going to burst at the seams. He nods again and turns his hand around so he can lace their fingers together. It sends him into ecstasy when the boy lets him and doesn't pull away.  
  
  
"I'll be your pilot and you'll be my mapper, and together there won't be a single corner of the universe that we can't reach. Maybe we can even sneak back to Lar for our graduation trip and see where humans used to live. They say First Earth is a terrible place but I think it'd be fun to explore, don't you? Like the abandoned mines here. It'd be fun."  
  
  
The strangeness of how much the boy is talking doesn't even register.  
  
  
"But we might not be able to go by ourselves because knowing Jjong, he will definitely want to tag along. And we really have no choice but to let him in on the trip because we'll need his connections to find the coordinates of First Earth. And if he's third-wheeling, we'll have to take Kibum and Taemin and Jongin and..."  
  
  
And then we'll go to Novus together. We'll move to Novus, to a proper Orbis State, and we'll take our families there, too. To Libens, maybe, Sunho is always talking about Libens. Or Laurea. Junghyuk's on Laurea-5 isn't he? But besides that, how do you feel about joining an existing fleet? Or maybe we can form our own with the others? I might be able to convince Changmin and Kyuhyun to wait for us, and Youngwoon's contract will probably end a year or so after we qualify for graduation. Fan's good and Yixing's gonna be amazing, I can feel it.  
  
  
And once we've got everyone assembled, just give it a few years. Give it a few and there won't be a single Novian who doesn't know our names. We'll be famous. We'll have everything we ever wanted.  
  
  
It'll be good, better than good...  
  
  
  
  
He doesn't know when the boy stands up. The next thing that he's aware of is the boy pulling back the hand with the paper airplane in it and running out into the sun. A few agile strides later, the boy hurls the flimsy thing into the air and it takes off, up and up, white on white.  
  
Then panic grips him—no, the plane isn't the one going up, he's the one falling away.  
  
He tries to grab at the grass beneath him, but there is nothing. He can't feel his body and the boy is standing too far away, hands shielding his eyes as he peers at the sky, entirely unaware. No! He tries to shout but no sound comes out. No no no, this is not supposed to happen, _no_ ——  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki's eyes snap open.  
  
  
What greets him is a swath of gray. It's the ceiling. Right, the ceiling. The gray is the ceiling.  
  
A tear rolls over the corner of his eye, across his temple, into his hair. He struggles to rein in the wild gallop of his heart and to unclench the fingers of his right hand from around a fistful of bedsheets. He blinks. It's the ceiling, it's the ceiling. It's just the ceiling. He's at home, in his bed, the way he has been every night for years. Everything is okay. Everything is just fine.  
  
His gasps for air turn into half a sob and he clamps a hand to his mouth.  
  
Jinki tries to hold himself still, but he can't help the tremors that shudder through him. Fearfully, he turns to the left. There is a human form beneath the blankets, next to him. He follows it up to a face, to Minho's sleeping face.  
  
Almost hungrily, he runs his eyes over those familiar features. Over the expanse of Minho's forehead, the ridge of Minho's brows, the shape of Minho's eyes, the way Minho's lashes fan out, Minho's nose, Minho's lips. It gradually calms him down and, gathering up the courage, he gingerly scoots a little closer. Minho doesn't wake up so he scoots closer still, close enough to obscure Minho's face with his own shadow, close enough to imagine he can feel the soft rush of air as Minho breathes out.  
  
  
He blinks and he sees the lithe boy under the sun. The paper plane, the ear-to-ear grin.  
  
  
This Minho doesn't grin like that, no. This Minho has an older face, a wearier face, a different texture. More weathered. Sharper angles, steeper planes. And this Minho—it hits him like a punch to the gut—this Minho has folds at the corners of his eyes. The beginnings of wrinkles. That's right. It's December again. Minho is turning twenty-eight; he is turning thirty. They've spent all their youth, exhausted their dreams, their happiness, their _we'll-do-better-next-year-and-make-it-happen_. They're no longer boys.  
  
  
Yet they're still here on Third Earth.  
  
  
And as far as he knows, they're never going to get to go anywhere else. They're never going to have what they used to tell each other they would have. Because when he closes his eyes, he finds nothing there. He can't see a future, and that scares him.  
  
It scares him to the point of dreaming his happiest memories as nightmares.  
  
  
But Minho, Minho, _Minho_ —he's so good, so beautiful, how could he possibly be part of a nightmare?  
  
  
  
  
Jinki's fingertips ghost over the other man's cheek, hovering a well-practice quarter-inch above his skin. It's enough. It's enough to feel the very human warmth radiating from him.  
  
  
  
  
 _You're finally home! I was getting worried. You didn't tell me you'd be out so late.  
  
Sorry, my phone's dead. I was with Jjong.  
  
You guys have been hanging out a lot more than usual lately. Is everything okay? Does he need help with something?  
  
Well, he can be an ass but we're still friends.  
  
Right. So how's he doing?  
  
Fine I guess? Why?  
  
Um, do you want dinner first or—  
  
You made dinner?  
  
If boiling spaghetti, heating frozen meatballs, and sp—  
  
You didn't hurt yourself, did you?  
  
What? No, I can manage that much without getting myself into trouble.  
  
Don't worry about it. I ate already. With Jjong.  
  
Ah...okay.  
  
I'll put it away. We can have it for breakfast tomorrow._  
  
  
  
  
Jinki hesitates and then slowly leans in. A little bit, and then a little bit more. But before their lips manage to meet, he turns himself around in bed, as quickly as he's able to manage. He draws his knees toward his chest and waits for the sky to brighten.  
  
  
  
 _I'm sorry, I'm sorry..._  
  
  
  
He digs his nails into his left elbow. I'm sorry. Night after night, there never is an answer.  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

 

  
  
  
  
"I'll be back late on Friday so don't wait for me."  
  
Jinki looks up from his plate of leftovers as Minho takes his to the sink and turns on the tap. He hurriedly chews and swallows so he can free up his mouth to talk—but what is there to say?  
  
"Why?" He keeps his tone casual, wincing as the other man scrubs his dish a little too forcefully.  
  
"Company party, the usual one with the games and the raffles. Except this year they're having it a couple of weeks before Christmas instead of two days before, when everyone would really rather just be off already." Minho puts the dish on the rack and drops the fork into the utensil holder. He wipes his hands with a towel. "Maybe I'll win a Vaska-EV or something this time and we won't have the clean and dry everything by hand anymore."  
  
Jinki doesn't make a quip about how a Vaska-EV is a kitchen-helper, which is by definition a domestic humanoid and thus requires an annual licensing fee, but he does catch onto something else. "Friday? As in this upcoming Friday?"  
  
"Ah shoot." Minho notices a small stain on the front of his white dress shirt and starts unbuttoning it. "Yeah, this Friday."  
  
Jinki puts down his chopsticks and follows the other man out of the kitchen to the bedroom. Minho tosses the shirt aside and, after determining his undershirt to be in an acceptable state of cleanliness, grabs a fresh one from the closet. He shrugs it on quickly and buttons up. Jinki slips in to pick up the stained article of clothing while Minho is on his way out, collar popped up as he secures his tie with a few deft jerks, blazer hanging over the crook of his elbow.  
  
  
 _There was a time when he used to hate ties, wasn't there? Said they felt like collars on the end of a leash._ The thought leaves Jinki dazed for a while.  
  
  
A noise elsewhere in the apartment snaps him out of it and he rushes to the front door, a little breathless and a little in pain from having knocked his bad foot into the bedroom door. "Is there any way you can not go on Friday?"  
  
"What do you mean _not_ go?" Minho is already in his topcoat and his hands slow in the motion of winding his scarf over his neck.  
  
"But it's this Friday—"  
  
"You know I have to go." Minho finally turns around. "My boss is going to be there. The department chief is going to be there. Heck, all the executives are going to be there. It's a company event and that makes it as much work as it is anything else. If I don't go, who knows if that promotion or that raise will get handed to someone else?"  
  
"But _Friday_ —"  
  
"I have to go Jinki, sorry about yesterday. I'll try to be home earlier tonight." Minho reaches over to plant a quick perfunctory kiss on his forehead. "Leave your plate in the sink to soak once you're done eating; I'll wash it when I get back."  
  
He doesn't bother to protest as the door closes.  
  
  
  
 _—is your birthday._  
  
  
  
Jinki lifts a hand, not to where Minho had kissed him but to the side of his head where Minho's hand had been. There, hidden by his hair, he finds a line of smooth skin where nothing grows. It has been cold to the touch for seven years. _This._ This is why he's not much good for anything, and much much less good for Minho. Why he has a pair of eyes and a pair of ears and a pair of arms and a pair of legs, and yet Minho treats him like he's missing something. (Not in a bad way, of course, because he has dropped enough plates and bowls to prove he's a hazard to his own well-being, but things don't have to be bad to hurt.)  
  
This is why he can't go with Minho on Friday when the party is for employees and family. Why no one at Minho's workplace even knows he exists.  
  
Why he and Minho are together but might as well not be.  
  
  
  
The shirt falls over his toes.  
  
  
  
This is why Minho's turning twenty-eight and he's turning thirty and they're holed up in a miserable old apartment in one of the most dilapidated districts on the planet, eking out a living. Why Minho is stuck embracing all the things that he hates as if he loves them, why he is stuck trying to think of ways to make up for it all but coming up empty.  
  
He thinks of the boy in his dreams again, lanky limbs, big hands, bigger smile. Paper airplanes.  
  
  
  
 _Hey. What do you think is inside a fault?_  
  
  
  
  
  
And it hurts to breathe.  
  
  
  
  


 


	5. Chapter 5

 

  
  
  
  
It starts the summer Minho is eight and his older brother is nine. Their mother is busy at work and their father is away on a trip to Nott, but their secondhand Ordo-AD malfunctions and refuses to let them set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature. His brother kicks the humanoid out of frustration, eliciting a series of colorful beeps and screeches that fail to construct proper words, while he looks on from where he's sitting on the kitchen counter, popping ice cubes into his mouth.  
  
"It even has the audacity to curse at me!" Minseok finally gives up and throws himself onto the leather couch. _Audacity_. His brother learned that word two days ago and uses it every chance he gets, mainly because Minho doesn't quite yet understand what it means.  
  
"And if you keep wiping your sweat on the couch, mom's going to curse at you too." Minho ducks as a cushion flies from the living room into the kitchen, making a perfect landing on top of the stove range.  
  
"Did it land on the stove?" Minseok doesn't even look up, just wriggles his toes.  
  
"Nope." Minho swipes it onto the floor, just before his brother turns to check.  
  
Minseok grunts and picks himself up and off the couch, padding loudly into the kitchen. He grabs the cushion and lobs it back into the living room. Minho feels a little guilty and offers him the last ice cube in the tray. It's slippery and Minseok nearly drops it on the ground, but the older boy catches it in time and shoves it into his mouth.  
  
"Let's go outside." Minseok mumbles something like that around his mouthful of ice.  
  
Minho dumps the tray in the sink and pushes himself off the counter. "Are we going to find a public building with free air conditioning?"  
  
His brother grabs him with a sticky moist hand. "I don't mean that."  
  
  
  
  
  
It turns out his brother means an airshow. It's a good thing the security at the charity fair doesn't register Marks for identification because they manage to skip the line and sneak past the android guards without paying for entrance. It's not the first time Minho sees something that can fly, but it's the first time that he's so amazed by it that he forgets everything else. He forgets their broken Ordo-AD, the heat, the fact that they snuck out when they're not supposed to. He forgets that his brother is next to him and he forgets the soreness that comes from craning his neck for too long.  
  
  
He sees the sky, blue and beautiful, smooth as cream.  
  
And he sees the aircrafts slicing across it, more graceful than any bird.  
  
  
He's never felt something so acutely before: _I want to be up there I want to be up there I want to be up there_. The thought makes him dizzy, as if his body is already beginning to forget where the ground is. Being able to walk and jump and run—the fastest in his whole grade at that—has never seemed inadequate before, but he now knows there's something beyond that, something greater. He can fly.  
  
  
After the show, Minho loses his brother in the crowd, but he doesn't panic. He doesn't panic even when he vaguely realizes he is lost and has no idea which direction would take him home. That's because he's not thinking about going home; something else is pulling him forward by instinct. He's never been much of a rule breaker, but he does it a second (third?) time today when he ignores the big holographic letters spelling out AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He almost makes it all the way over to one of the hangars when a man in a strange-looking jumper stops him.  
  
It turns out the man is one of the pilots who flew in the show today, but instead of getting Minho into trouble for trespassing, he brings him over to the other pilots. They look at him as curiously as he looks at them, and a dozen questions fired off in rapid succession later, Minho finally opens his mouth and can't stop. He confesses his admiration for them and what they could do and how high they could fly, asks them about what it feels like to go up in the air like that, to have wings, to be something more than human.  
  
  
And they teach him of something even bigger than the sky, even more limitless.  
  
  
The man who caught Minho points to two of the other men and to the lady handing out brownies. _We're leapers_ , he says, _do you know what that is?_ Minho shakes his head, eyes wide. The man grins—as Minho grows older, the man's face fades slowly from his memories, but he always remembers that lopsided toothy grin—and points a finger straight up. _We flew in the show today as a favor to one of my old buddies, but normally we do something much cooler up in space._  
  
Minho nods without really comprehending what the man means.  
  
 _Do you know the distance from Jorth to the Cataract?_  
  
Minho shakes his head this time. He has never heard of the Cataract.  
  
 _Something like three hundred and fifty-six point six three light-years. So if you traveled at the speed of light, you'd be almost three hundred and fifty-seven years older by the time you got there._  
  
Humans don't live that long, Minho points out reflexively.  
  
 _You're right,_ the man grins again, _which is why we can get there in two and a half weeks, on a good trip._  
  
  
  
That evening, Minho makes it home to the sight of his older brother wailing about having accidentally lost Minho and their mother pacing back and forth, fuming. Minho purposely closes the front door a little louder than usual. That gets their attention and he notices that Minseok and their mother have matching red eyes. It takes a few seconds before Minseok springs forward like a cannonball and tackles Minho into the wall.  
  
Minho ignores the sobbing mess in his arms and looks at their mother, brimming with earnestness.  
  
  
"Mom, I want to be a pilot when I grow up!"  
  
  
  
His mother simply pats him all over to make sure he's still in one piece before going to the kitchen to make all of Minho's favorites for dinner. That night, Minho pulls his blankets over his head and takes out the small burnished metal box the man at the airshow had given him as a parting gift. He pushes his thumb against the latch and waits for the lid to disassemble itself. And there, suspended in the middle, is a colorless lens with a small notch on the side. His fingers are still a tad too short, but when the man had made a circle with his forefinger and thumb, the lens had fit perfectly inside. He picks it up out of the box and holds it up to his eye.  
  
The lens is cool to the touch and everything looks even darker through it than without it, but whenever he passes it over an edge—the outline of his fingers, the corner of his pillow, where his blankets meet the bed—he see faint bursts of white static. Tiny hexagons. He can see them, the edges, they are smudges of rainbow like oil over water. But the man had asked him: _do you see tiny white dots?_ So Minho wonders if he's not supposed to see hexagons after all.  
  
It takes a bit of time before the lens warms up in his hand, and faintly, starting from the center, it begins to glow a soft cobalt blue.  
  
 _See this?_ Before giving it to Minho, the man had held the lens up to the sun, letting it hover above his palm. It'd flipped itself around once, twice, three times till it'd aligned its axis with some horizon that isn't Jorth's. Then that small circle of blue sky turned ink black before it bled slowly into gold and then abruptly flared into white. _This is where my superpower lies. I'm retiring it because I've got a new pair now, but regardless, don't lose it kid! It's worth a fortune._  
  
  
Minho goes to sleep that night cradling his newfound treasure, a big smile stretched over his lips.  
  
  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -AD or -EV — ending designations for household humanoids; reference to Adam and Eve, because I'm creative like that.


	6. Chapter 6

 

  
  
  
  
And the summer that Minho is fifteen, he takes his first step forward.  
  
When he enters the space aviation academy, he doesn't know anyone there. But it's like any other school where the kids soon assemble themselves into threes and fours and fives. He sticks mostly with the bunch of boys that he went on the orientation tour with and he keeps in touch with the pair of upper year students that had led them on that tour, Shim Changmin and Cho Kyuhyun. In class, they're taught the dry material first—the Principles and Theories, spacecraft blueprints, fault dynamics, cosmography—and they're put through general physical training. The books are not where his heart is and the rigorous exercises tire him out, day after day, but the thought that he'll get to see space, actually be _in_ space, sustains him.  
  
It's only a month in when he hears about a student in Kyuhyun's class named Lee Jinki who is apparently the best in his year. And if the rumors circulating around the boys' dorms have an ounce of truth to them, Ahn Chilhyun, the top trainer of the whole academy, has been keeping tabs on the boy since the end of his freshman year. The cream of the crop is handpicked by the elite trainers once they hit fourth year; the rest of the pilots-in-training are randomly distributed to the other trainers. So this Lee Jinki fellow has exactly what Minho is looking forward to—being the most promising of his year, getting noticed by trainer Ahn, and ending up learning with the best, competing with the best.  
  
He imagines the way this Lee Jinki would look. He's probably pretty tall, right? Maybe somewhere in Changmin's neighborhood. Well-built too. As for hair color, he must have something that stands out... But after a few a revisions, Minho realizes that except for the white-blond hair—styled the way their cosmography lecturer styles his no less—he's really just cobbling together the different parts and pieces of the people he knows.  
  
  
  
The answer to his curiosity comes unexpectedly one night in the winter of that year.  
  
  
  
With restlessness thrumming in his body, he has trouble falling asleep. So he sneaks out of his room in his pajamas. It takes a few seconds of standing at the landing for him to decide to go up instead of down. Changmin's voice drifts back from the day of their orientation, warning all the incoming freshmen that the roof is strictly off limits, but Minho decidedly ignores it because later that very same day, Changmin had told him the students from the mechanics program had long ago disabled the security of the door to the roof.  
  
Minho emerges into the icy night, suddenly aware that maybe he should have grabbed his coat, but what demands far more of his attention is the cloudless sky. It's a vast sea of stars, brighter than what he remembers them to look like. A rare sight on a polluted, heavy industry-based planet such as Jorth.  
  
"They're beautiful, aren't they?"  
  
Minho jumps at the disembodied voice and quickly scans the roof. Has someone caught him? Is it one of the dormitory's Manus-AD units? But it sounds quite human—  
  
"Over here! No, a bit more to the right. Sorry, I mean left. Your left, my right."  
  
He finds a boy huddled out of the wind, wrapped in blankets till he's only visible from the chin up, eyes twinkling encouragingly. A little skeptical, Minho makes his way closer. The boy has a short crop of straight black hair, apple cheeks that makes him look somewhere between thirteen and fourteen, and a mouthful of slightly crooked but pearly white teeth—an absolutely harmless sort of existence.  
  
"Sit down. I don't bite." The boy teases, breath white in the cold air. "Do you want a few blankets? I stole one from each of my roommates so I've got a lot."  
  
Minho quietly accepts the offering because he really is freezing to death and he settles down, next to the boy. As he arranges himself into a comfortable position, he feels the other person's eyes on him the whole time. When he looks back at him questioningly, instead of shying away, the boy just keeps on smiling. Minho clears his throat a little awkwardly.  
  
"What are you doing up here so late?" He hears himself asking.  
  
"Waiting." The boy turns his attention back to the sky.  
  
"For?"  
  
"Have you ever heard of the Iuno Swifts?"  
  
"As in the birds?"  
  
"No, they're a private fleet of leapers and mappers. They don't really have a permanent base but many of the jobs that they take on fly out of Iuno. Hence the name Iuno Swifts."  
  
"Oh." Minho scowls a little. In his memory, the only leapers are the people he had met back at the airshow hangar when he was eight.  
  
The boy seems unfazed by Minho's lack of enthusiasm. "They're pretty good, and really quite famous around Iuno. But if you're only asking within the leaper community, then they're pretty well-known elsewhere too. Anyway, what I meant to say is that every year on this day, at least a third of the fleet flies by Jorth."  
  
Minho looks skyward too, mildly surprised that these supposedly famous pilots would pick the same day as his birthday. "Well I doubt you'd be able to see them with the naked eye from here. We _are_ kind of separated by the whole of Jorth's atmosphere."  
  
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" The boy grins wider as if he's letting Minho in on a secret. "But when they do their annual Jorth flyby, they always dip down low enough to skim the exobase and put on a light show. I saw it by accident when I was eleven and everyone thought I was crazy the next day. Took me quite a long time to figure out what those lights were and I've been staying up to see it every year since then, a sort of early birthday gift to myself."  
  
"When's your birthday?"  
  
"The fourteenth."  
  
"Wait, how old are you?"  
  
"I'm turning eighteen, you?"  
  
"Oh." Minho can't help but look surprised. "I'm sixteen. Sixteen exactly."  
  
"What does 'exactly' mean?"  
  
"It's my birthday today."  
  
This time, the boy is the one who looks surprised. But when he recovers, his eyes crinkle and he singsongs: "Happy birthday!"  
  
"Thanks."  
  
  
They stay silent for a while, waiting for the Swifts to light up the night sky. Suddenly, Minho doesn't feel so cold anymore even though the fingers with which he's holding the blankets have gone entirely numb. There's something warm in his heart, a sense of anticipation, the same sort of feeling he gets when he thinks about flying himself.  
  
  
"Maybe the Swifts are doing this for you."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Kinda awesome, isn't it? That they'd do their flyby on your birthday."  
  
"I guess?"  
  
"Do you know what kind of birds swifts are?"  
  
"I know they fly really high and have forked tails. Or something. They were never introduced to Jorth so I've never seen them in person."  
  
"Right, swifts fly really high. They're also some of the fastest fliers. A common swift would never win a race within the family but even it can cruise at more than twice the speed that the fastest human is capable of reaching in explosive bursts." The boy pauses. "And they have really short legs."  
  
"What do short legs have to do with anything?"  
  
"They don't like to land. In fact, the proper name for the swifts is Greek for without feet. That's what the humans way back on First Earth used to consider swifts as: birds without feet."  
  
"But maybe the sky is where they belong." Minho can't help the twinkle in his eyes. "Isn't it cool to just keep on flying? Higher than everything else except the clouds, riding on the wind, absolutely free to go anywhere you want. I think that's a lot more interesting than being earthbound the way flightless birds are."  
  
The boy next to him bursts out laughing.  
  
Minho feels the heat crawling up his neck, so he asks a little defensively: "What's so funny?"  
  
"No bird goes on flying forever, you know. Sure, swifts spend most of their lives in the air, more than any other bird, but they still have to come back down." The boy has on the brightest smile, brighter than that of the man who gave Minho his first dream, brighter than the stars, brighter than even the flurries of white hexagons that Minho sees through the lens that he still keeps. (And that's saying something, because those flurries have been growing more and more radiant over the years.) "They don't like flat ground, but they do settle on cliffs and such."  
  
They both look to the sky when a flash of blue way, way up catches their eye.  
  
  
"Even they need a home."  
  
  
  
  
And that's the first time Choi Minho meets Lee Jinki.  
  
  
  
  


 


	7. Chapter 7

  
  
  
  
  
Jinki shrinks a little further into his jacket and tugs the scarf higher up over his nose. There is a bit of glitter on his sleeve from earlier when a humanoid repair store's overdecorated mascot bot tried telling him about their holiday discounts. It's colder than usual for this time of the year and his nose and throat are burning from it. By the time he worms his way past the perimeter fence enclosing the abandoned mine and stumbles around the obstacles to reach open ground, his cheeks are a bright splotchy red.  
  
His feet take him along the familiar route he'd traveled down a million times over.  
  
The first time he came here he'd been almost thirteen, alone, and on a dare. But before long, he had built himself a fortress inside one of the hoistrooms. The first people he'd shown it to were Kim Kibum, who lived three floors directly above him, and Lee Changsun, who used to sit two rows behind him in elementary school. Kibum would never change his mind about hating the place, but he was also the one who was the best at memorizing the layout and volunteered to tag along whenever he found out the other two were going. Changsun, on the other hand, would get lost ten seconds into things even though he was the most vocal when it came to suggestions about where to go next.  
  
With that hoistroom as their homebase, they gradually explored the other surface facilities. The whole place was like a carcass, organs emptied out, scraps of flesh stripped away, bare white bones exposed. They didn't have access to the guts of the mine though—the lifts and skips had been removed, leaving behind towering headframes, open shafts, and no easy way underground. So at first, despite Changsun obsessing over the idea of going down to see the galleries, none of them really did anything about it. The closest Jinki and Changsun got was tossing down a rock or two, waiting for a noise that never came, and there would be Kibum, flapping his arms and yelling at them to get away from there.  
  
But then Changsun moved to Second Earth, Kibum finally put his foot down, and Jinki met Minho. It was Minho who eventually figured out the way to get underground. They were young back then, young and eager, living between one breath and the next. And so armed with brashness, flashlights, and a backpack full of whatever supplies they imagined they'd need, they finally laid claim to that expansive realm of darkness. They would spend hours combing through every level, going as far they were capable of reaching, crawling if they needed to. He can't do that anymore, the crawling, even just going underground again. That world has become something that only exists inside his mind.  
  
Jinki is staring down into the depth of the open mine shaft when a loud ring echoes throughout the vast space. The harsh noise startles him so much he instinctively pulls back and his left heel gets caught on one of the loose cables crisscrossing the floor. It takes an enormous amount of flailing and one-footed hopping to not go down. Collapsing against the outermost of the metal drums, he pulls out the source of his almost-heart attack.  
  
The name displayed on his phone makes his stomach clench.  
  
He waits for it to stop ringing, but it doesn't. So he grits his teeth and picks up. For a while, there is only breathing on either end of the line. A victor emerges from this war of silence when Jinki sighs in resignation.  
  
  
"Taemin." This many years later, he's able to keep his tone even, but the name itself has become something foreign on his tongue.  
  
"Hi hyung." The voice that comes through the phone sounds a lot less composed in comparison.  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hi."  
  
  
They both fall silent again.  
  
  
"Wh—" Jinki clears his throat. "Why are you calling?"  
  
"Your phone is registered to Minho-hyung's Mark, right? So it should be okay?"  
  
"That's not what I meant."  
  
"But hyung, I'm twenty-six now! I have my own phone and I pay for it myself, directly, from my own account. I've had my own since I was twenty. Mum and dad don't have access to my call records, so they won't know. Even if they do somehow find out, they'll think I'm calling Minho-hyung. I mean it's strange that I'd call Minho-hyung but they won't figure out it's you." Taemin hurries to explain himself, eager for reassurance that he isn't doing something reprimandable. "I know you worry, but I swear mum and dad won't find out. I _swear_."  
  
Jinki bites his lip.

The years have made it easier. Easier to not think of the initial days of pain and fear. The days when he would wake up in a body that was foreign to him and the sight of the front door would chafe his nerves raw, because he was so hopelessly, dreadfully sure that he knew what waited on the other side, that there could be no other outcome. _Terminate the ghost, Purge the accessories._ Every child of Regio has heard of the procedure.

The years have made it easier for those risks to not feel real as back then. Maybe—Jinki slams down on the thought.

  
"How are they, mum and dad? And you? How have you been?"  
  
"We're good, hyung." The slight tremor to Taemin's voice tells Jinki that he has so much more to say, like water caught behind a dam.  
  
"Yeah?" He sinks down onto the ground from the weakness that washes through him.  
  
"We're doing fine. I promise."  
  
"So..."  
  
"Listen hyung, can we meet?"  
  
" _Taemin_."  
  
"I know!" Taemin hears the disapproval in those two syllables. "I know you don't want to! I know, but please? I haven't seen you in ages and I miss you hyung. I really do, so please?"  
  
"This isn't about what either of us wants."  
  
"But I _need_ to see you!"  
  
"I'm a ghost, Taem." Jinki closes his eyes and whispers. "You can't see ghosts."  
  
  
Neither of them laughs.  
  
  
"I know." Taemin's voice thickens. "But I'm being serious. I have something important to tell you, so I want to do it face to face. Please hyung? Let me see you."  
  
Jinki can't muster the right words.  
  
"I know I'm being troublesome but please?"  
  
Something is cold; Jinki's not quite sure if it's him or if it's the metal drum behind his back.  
  
"I'm sure there's some place where we can meet safely, where people who know me won't see us. Or where people won't see us at all. I'm sure. Hyung, where are you?"  
  
Jinki wonders if it'd be okay to hang up now.  
  
"Hyung?" Taemin pleads.  
  
  
He teeters, he wavers, and then he gives in.  
  
  
"The mines." His jaw feels stiff.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Homebase."  
  
There is a pause.  
  
"Oh. Oh! I remember, I remember. Are you staying there? Can you stay there? I'm in district sixteen right now. Wait for me. I'll be there in twenty, twenty-five."  
  
That easy elation strikes Jinki like a physical blow; he doesn't reply.  
  
"Hyung?"  
  
He works his throat until the sound comes out. "Yeah. Okay."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Taemin grew up well. That's Jinki's conclusion when he finally sees his brother, as breathless as if he'd run here on foot all the way from district sixteen. Taemin is tall now, shoulders broad like a man's and skinny frame filled out in all the right places. He carries himself with a grace and a confidence that Jinki doesn't recognize and he has a headful of hazelnut hair—the last time Jinki had seen him Taemin had been almost nineteen, his hair the color of bitter chocolate, permanently unruly—that falls softly about his face, a sharper nose, cheeks rosy from the cold. He's radiant, absolutely radiant. To the point that it makes Jinki's eyes water.  
  
As Taemin gets closer, Jinki spends the volume of a breath wondering if he should get up. He doesn't make up his mind before he tries, but his arm softens every time he puts weight on it. He realizes then he is hurting, hurting from the way he is and the way Taemin is, and from the way Taemin looks at him that speaks of things he doesn't want to hear. He realizes there's a stitch in his side and it's setting him on fire and the leg that he has folded underneath himself is screaming at him in pain. All he wants to do is to run away, but he can't. He can't. Not because it's something he has willed himself into facing but because he literally can't. So he doesn't even know when he lets Taemin get close enough to gather him up into his arms. Doesn't know why he's letting the boy—a man, he's a man now—bury his face against his shoulder till it's wet and cold and heavy.  
  
This is his brother. This is his baby brother.  
  
Jinki vaguely wants to pat Taemin's trembling back, to tell him _you're fine, you're fine, why are you crying, you're just fine_ , but his one good arm is trapped between them. His left hand twitches in his lap where it ultimately remains.  
  
  
  
It takes a long time before Taemin pulls back, hands slipping from Jinki's shoulders to Jinki's forearms. He looks down. There is a good gap between his thumb and middle finger where his left hand is locked around his brother's right arm, but his right hand is capable of closing almost entire over his brother's left arm. He stares, and as he stares his grasp tightens. Jinki notices and pulls his right arm free, forcefully breaking Taemin's grip on his left. The coldness of his touch jolts Taemin back to alertness.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
Jinki says nothing but reaches out to pat Taemin's head the way he used to. Taemin is halfway through ducking before he realizes what he is doing. Before the older man has a chance to pull back, however, Taemin takes hold of his wrist with one hand and reaches into his jacket pocket with the other. He pulls out a wool knit mitten and tugs it over those icy fingers. When he reaches for his brother's left hand, Jinki brushes him away and insists he'll put it on himself.  
  
As Taemin plops himself down on the concrete floor, legs numb from squatting, he watches the other man lay both hands flat on his thighs. He watches him flex and then extend his fingers, the smiling mouth of the upside down face stitched into each mitten disappearing then reappearing. The fingers of his left hand are out of sync with his right. They're a little slower, a little lazier, and after a while, they go still. But Jinki's right hand keeps at it with no particular rhythm at all, curling and uncurling.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"We're moving to Novus," Taemin says at some point.  
  
Jinki freezes up. His face goes blank before something glimmers in his eyes. Very softly, without looking at his brother, he says: "You're graduating."  
  
Taemin does his best to put on a smile even though he knows Jinki isn't looking. "Yeah."  
  
"You're graduating," he repeats, voice a little vacant.  
  
Taemin licks his lips a little nervously. "I'm sorry."  
  
"You're graduating..." It's not an accusation.  
  
  
Jinki pulls up his knees and buries his face out of sight, and Taemin wants to cry more than when he thought his brother had died. He doesn't know what to say or how to comfort him, doesn't know what could possibly make this better, because how do you make something like this better? It's a happy thing. He's happy that he's going to Novus. He wants it, he has always wanted it, and he's not going to give it up. So how does he make it better?  
  
  
"I'm sorry." Except he's not. He feels something, but sorry isn't quite the right word.  
  
"Why? No one gave you shortcuts; you earned this." Jinki laughs into the crook of his elbow. "You were always going to go to Novus, Taem. It's six seven years late, but now you're going to Novus. And mum and dad are able to go too. You're doing for them what I couldn't do so why are you sorry? If anything, I'm sorry you had to give up—"  
  
"It turns out I'm a pretty decent mapper, hyung."  
  
Jinki says nothing.  
  
"Starting out three four years later than everybody else at the academy kinda sucked, but I make a pretty decent mapper. So it's okay. I didn't get to have the thing that I wanted the most, but that doesn't mean nothing else in the world is good enough. Flying and fault-slipping and all that, it's not so bad now that I've gone through with it. I think I like it, quite a bit, and being kinda good at it helps. So I'm happy with this. Mum and dad are, too."  
  
Taemin smiles with a little less effort this time.  
  
"And even if it's rather selfish, I just want to know you're happy too."  
  
  
  
The smiling face of the mitten peeks over Jinki's hunched shoulder.  
  
  
  
"Are you and Minho-hyung doing well?"  
  
It takes Jinki a few moments to find an answer. "Minho's getting a promotion, I think. And a salary raise."  
  
"Well that's good news. Tell him congrats."  
  
Jinki smiles in return and wonders why Taemin doesn't see how ugly of an expression it is. Ah, wait, he's got his face pressed up against his knees. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand.  
  
"I love him right?" He's not sure whom he's asking.  
  
"Of course you do."  
  
"I love him."  
  
"I know."  
  
Jinki turns to Taemin but Taemin can't read what's in his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
"I love him."  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this back in 2012, except for Kang Seungyeop, all other names were borrowed from real people. I don't mean anything by using those particular names or by describing the things I do about those characters.

 

 

 

 

 

Jonghyun slides into the seat across from Minho with a bright breathless greeting, hands fumbling with the scarf that has swallowed up his neck. The powdery snow dusting his hair and shoulders is already melting. Minho looks up from the serviette that he has been busy folding, the lines of his mouth white and strained no matter how hard he tries to arrange them into some other expression.  
  
"Why must we meet at places like this all the time?"  
  
"Hey, it's a cafe today, not a diner! Now which way does this thing unwind..."  
  
Minho forgoes courtesy and cuts straight to the point. "Are you going to pay?"  
  
Jonghyun pauses in his herculean endeavor and blinks at his friend before his eyes lower to the mug of plain tea on the table. "Is this why you ordered cheap tea at a cafe known for its glorious menu of non-tea-things? Because you think I would be a bad friend and—"  
  
"Well the _other_ choice was water and I am in debt." Minho can't help the way the second half of his sentence turned into a hiss.  
  
"And I _said_ in my text that I've got you covered! Jorth, are you not being fed? You're so snappy." Jonghyun finally gets his scarf off.  
  
Minho takes a deep breath and goes back to his serviette.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"Forget it, I know you're stressed."  
  
The shorter man unzips his jacket and untucks something he's been cradling between the layers of his clothing. It catches Minho's eye when his friend puts it down on the table. He abandons his almost completed spacecraft origami and picks it up, unfolding it to get a better look.  
  
"Newspaper?"  
  
"Yup." Jonghyun grins.  
  
"On paper..."  
  
"Authentic paper."  
  
"...Why?"  
  
"A couple of my artist friends are doing a retro movement thing for some kids charity, so for the rest of the month they're going to sell actual physical paper copies of the news! They've put a lot of work into figuring out the procedure and assembling the equipment and everything. I say the result is pretty darn good. Their trial run was last week in district seven and the reception was phenomenal, so now they're distributing all over Jorth. How cool is that huh?"  
  
"It's a waste of resources."  
  
Jonghyun rolls his eyes and calls out two orders to one of the boys in aprons running around the place. When he turns back, he makes a strangled noise in his throat.  
  
" _Minho._ "  
  
"What? I'm putting the paper—" he makes a large tear in the front page "—to good use." Another tear frees up a perfect square.  
  
" _This_ is a waste of resources! And it's _my_ newspaper!"  
  
Minho spares a moment to nudge the tea along with its temperature-sensitive color-shifting coaster closer to Jonghyun, who is still looking at him in disbelief. "Are you trying to placate me by offering me lukewarm tea that I'm going to be paying for? That you've already drunk?"  
  
Jonghyun gets no answer.  
  
"Minho, that's hurtful."  
  
"So." Minho glances up at him quickly before giving his attention to the slowly forming plane in his hands. "You said you thought of something? And it's not as risky as your last idea to make me some quick money?"  
  
"Right, now about that..." Jonghyun clasps his hands and leans forward, whispering conspiratorially. "You've still got all your stuff from the academy right?"  
  
Minho visibly stiffens.  
  
"Wait wait wait, don't get mad at me yet! Just hear me out. I wouldn't bring this up without good reason."  
  
Minho stares at him for a while before he acquiesces.  
  
"Okay, so you've got all your stuff from back then right?"  
  
He shifts in his seat and slowly nods.  
  
"Including your proto-lenses, your graduation badge, and your message cube? Your uniform?"  
  
"What are you suggesting?"  
  
"Auction them."  
  
Jonghyun looks as if he'd just said the most brilliant thing in the world, but Minho only frowns, barely giving the idea a moment's consideration before he starts shooting it down.  
  
"My lenses are eight years old and haven't seen maintenance. They're dead lenses." He makes a short, jerky wave of his hand. "Dead. Still will light up prettily enough to fool those who don't know a thing about them, but anyone who has a reason to want a pair will recognize that they can't link to any Mark and are about as useful as a glow-in-the-dark sticker. And there is a reason why there is no such thing as secondhand lenses. The creation of proto-sight is a delicate labor. When my lenses were commissioned, they were fine-tuned to my physical and neurological requirements. What could anyone else possibly do with them?"  
  
"Collectors! There are ridiculously rich people who are a bit strange in the head and like to collect stuff like this. And may I remind you, it turned out that you didn't need lenses to fly, so they're practically brand new! Except for the part where they've been sitting in your case for ages. Except for that, they're brand new. That's rare."  
  
"Rare is only good if people want it."  
  
"Well, you were kinda famous back when you were still in the academy."  
  
"Jjong—"  
  
"Hey kid!" Jonghyun beams enthusiastically at the server who has just brought them a matcha latte and a wet cappuccino. "Have you ever heard of a Choi Minho?"  
  
The boy peaks at Minho from behind his bangs before looking back at Jonghyun. "Y-you mean the leaper who can fault-slip without proto-lenses? Yeah, he was pretty famous for that right? I-I'm a fan...actually..."  
  
Minho sighs. "Did Jonghyun pay you to say that?"  
  
"Uh." The boy fidgets, avoiding Minho's eyes.  
  
"Jonghyun..." Minho turns and notices his friend making threatening faces at the kid.  
  
"Do I still get paid now that he saw through it?" The boy rubs his nose and braves Jonghyun's potential wrath.  
  
" _No_." Jonghyun thunks his head down on the table, almost knocking over his latte. "You did nothing! In fact, you ruined it! Why did you stutter? And why were you reciting the lines when I told you you were supposed to _feel_ them and _own_ them? Now go away."  
  
The boy's mouth twists at the hand that Jonghyun waves dismissively at him. "I'm telling your sister that you bribed me to lie for you."  
  
Jonghyun hisses after his retreating back. "Look who's a tattletale! And well, if we're going that far then I'll just stop taking you with me when I go watch shuttle launches at the spaceport! Let's see how you manage to do _that_ behind your brother's back when I'm not there to help!"  
  
The kid freezes, struggles for a bit, and then grits out a _fine_ before running away.  
  
"Was that Kang Seungyeop's little brother?" Minho takes a sip of the cappuccino and licks away the foam on his lip. "Is that why you picked this cafe? Because you recruited your brother-in-law to lie to me?"  
  
"You're missing the point! The point being that some people still know who you are—or well, who Choi Minho is—and they'll probably be willing to pay good money for your lenses. Besides, they're fucking proto-lenses even if they're dead. That shit is expensive as hell."  
  
Minho looks unconvinced so Jonghyun switches up his angle of attack.  
  
"Okay, and then there's your graduation badge and your memory cube. You probably aren't aware but a couple of pilots from your year are doing pretty well. Especially Fan. After he and Zitao went to Second Earth, they managed to get into Novus. Their mandatory initial landing contract ended almost two years ago, and since then they've joined up with Cho Kyuhyun and them. They've been making quite a name for themselves."  
  
"That's great." Minho's grip on the mug handle tightens before he lets go and goes back to his paper origami. "That's good for them."  
  
"Right, so the message cube has got Mark imprints from them. Legit Mark imprints, much more meaningful than simple signatures. You don't even have to sell the original. Make duplicates! They've got fans who'll snatch 'em right up. And the graduation badge—"  
  
"Nobody sells their badges."  
  
"Exactly! Makes them even rarer on the market. Especially rare because you and Fan and them are Ahn Chilhyun's last batch of students!"  
  
"Nobody sells them because that's almost like selling your fault-slip license."  
  
"Except it's not! And it's totally legal. A little shady, but totally legal."  
  
  
  
Jonghyun stares at Minho, expectant, but the taller man is the image of reluctance.  
  
  
  
"I mean, you don't really have other assets that you can liquidate right? These are the only sorts of things you own that I think might actually auction for a pretty decent amount of money. And the bonus is that they're small and you're the one hanging onto them, so even if they go missing, it's not noticeable."  
  
Jonghyun knows his friend is swaying.  
  
"Think about it. Sleep on it. And then thank me. I'll hook you up."  
  
  
  
  
  
Minho lets his cappuccino go cold. He stays in that corner seat, folding planes, some larger than others, different makes and different models. He has been refining the art of it since he was eight, so his fingers move deftly without a second's hesitation. He remembers Jinki being curious about his habit of collecting paper or any paper-like sheets of material, remembers the afternoons spent teaching him all the little tricks, remembers the look of concentration on his face as he tries to copy what Minho was doing.  
  
Jinki's planes always come out as prettily as Minho's, but they never fly as far. And Jinki would complain that Minho must be withholding some kind of secret.  
  
Minho remembers finding him one evening out on the rooftop of the boys' dorm with a stack of paper pinned underneath his foot, turning each page into birds instead of planes. Minho remembers the sun was behind him, the shadows obscuring his expression.  
  
 _Hey._  
  
Jinki looked up then. _Hi._  
  
 _Where did you get all that paper?_  
  
Jinki waved a few pages at him. _It's my leaper training contract. I know you think it's a waste of resources to have this stuff printed out but I asked to get a physical copy when I, well..._  
  
 _When you terminated it._  
  
Jinki handed him a bird. _Yup._  
  
Minho sat down beside him and tried to balance the bird on its two skinny legs. _Why?_  
  
Jinki brushed the hair out of his face. _It sets me back two years, so now we'll be graduating together! And I talked to my parents about this. They're fine with it._  
  
 _Jinki._ He grabbed the older boy's wrist and stopped him from starting on a new bird.  
  
Jinki looked at him and finally burst out laughing. _Why do all of you think that it'd be so bad for me to become a mapper instead?_  
  
Minho didn't let go. _But I don't get it. You were doing so well._  
  
Jinki patted his hand in reassurance. _And who says I plan to stop doing well? I'll still do well. I have an intuition for mapping that's rare. Why do you think the administration would allow me to switch programs when contractually they get a smaller cut of my earnings from my first ten years in the workforce if I graduate as a mapper rather than a leaper?_  
  
 _But you've always wanted to fly._  
  
 _I'll still fly. Mappers get to go on flights._  
  
Jinki picked up one of the birds on the ground and threw it in Minho's face.  
  
 _Stop looking like your cat just died!_  
  
Minho rubbed at the spot where the paper beak had struck him.  
  
  
  
  
 _It's not called giving up, Minho. I'm trading in one dream for something even bigger._  
  
  
  
  
Minho remembers how soft and radiant he looked then, with the wind in his hair and the sun on his cheek, half a halo made of golden clouds. Minho remembers his own reflection in those eyes, the warmth of his lips. Minho remembers being happy and sad and excited and confused, uncertain, a little afraid, but light enough to fly without—  
  
  
He jumps when one of the servers tells him they're closing up soon. It's pitch black outside and Jonghyun's long gone. Minho stares for a bit at the back of the empty chair on the other side of the table, and Jonghyun's last words come back to him.  
  
 _Are you sure you don't want to talk to Jinki about it?_  
  
No. No, he's going to make this work himself. It's his fault anyway, so he's going to be the one who fixes everything. Minho gathers up the fleet of planes littering the table and crushes them together. He's about to wrap it all up with the last remaining pages of the newspaper when one of the squares he didn't use falls out and flips over. A rather unfamiliar black and white face grins up at him from next to his toes. Lopsided, with a little too much teeth. But no, he _does_ know that face.  
  
Minho gets the wind knocked out of him.  
  
The scent of summer heat, dizzying blue, the frisson in his body at realizing the boundlessness that lay beyond this tiny planet. Slowly, he sets down the mess of paper and ink in his hands and bends down. With unsteady fingers, he picks the square off the floor and turns it right side up.  
  
  
His heart accelerates.  
  
  
There are whispers of thoughts at the back of his mind, that the man is famous enough to be written about in the news, that, by Jorth, this is an obituary, that maybe he should find the rest of this page and read the whole thing, that maybe he should feel _something_. But at the forefront, drowning out everything else, is the question: would people really buy dead lenses? If they would, if...  
  
  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

 

  
  
  
  
Jinki finds himself standing at the stove, watching the dumplings swim around below the surface of the almost boiling water. His ears are buzzing and he can't quite recall how he made it home, but he knows it has to have been at least a few hours since he's been back. The apartment heater is on, but his hands still feel cold. He looks down at them, his right in a fist and the fingers of his left curled loosely against his palm.  
  
With a soft sigh, he turns away from the stove and plops himself down in a chair. Next to him on the kitchen table is a pair of wool knit mittens. And under the mittens is a clear rectangular card with three parallel blue veins. When he swipes a thumb over its surface, it lights up faintly under his touch and two of the blue veins reassemble themselves into a row of numerals. Underneath the initial _9_ is Taemin's Mark imprint and next to it is the name of the account's new authorized holder: _Choi, Minho_.  
  
The earnings he'd accumulated over his student years, doing extra work on the side. The consolation payment from the academy. The insurance payout. What he could save from all the odd jobs that Heechul has found for him, seven and a half years' worth of those. If he couldn't be a son to his parents and a brother to Taemin, at least he could give them something right? But it turns out they didn't even use a single reotaler of it.  
  
Mum and dad gave him the account, Taemin said, but since he knew the truth he couldn't use the money for himself, not even for tuition. And now that they're leaving, he felt he should give it back.  
  
Jinki admits that he and Minho need the money more than Taemin and mum and dad, but...  
  
  
  
Jinki wants to laugh.  
  
What has he been doing all this time?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Somewhere along the line, Minho comes home too. The mulmandu turns into manduguk, but the soup is a little thin and the skin of the dumplings a little overcooked.  
  
  
As he watches Minho spoon the food into his mouth, the words just slip out: "I love you."  
  
Minho's chewing pauses but he doesn't look up. Then slowly, he swallows and clears his throat. "What's this all of a sudden?"  
  
"Nothing." Jinki quickly turns his attention to his soup.  
  
There is silence.  
  
Minho clears his throat again and mumbles. "I love you too."  
  
Jinki ducks his head lower. Setting down the spoon, under the pretense of wiping his nose, he passes the heel of his hand over the corners of his eyes too.  
  
"I know you don't like it because it's risky but I went out today."  
  
"Everything's okay?"  
  
"I saw Taemin."  
  
The confession makes Minho pause again. "Saw him...from a distance?"  
  
"No." Jinki stirs his remaining dumplings in circles. "I met him. He asked to meet."  
  
"But he promised that—"  
  
"Don't get mad at him! He just wanted to see me."  
  
Minho puts down his spoon.  
  
"So are you okay?"  
  
"Why are you asking if I'm okay? You see me everyday. But Taemin, he..." Jinki glances at Minho and smiles. "He's doing well. He grew up well. I don't think I would have recognized him in a crowd. He's almost your height now, I'd say. Hazelnut hair, a little like the haircut you have, or well, about this length anyway. It's hard to believe he's twenty-six when he still acts like such a kid sometimes."  
  
"What did you guys talk about? Why did he suddenly ask to meet?"  
  
"He—" _is going to Novus_ , but Jinki can't say it out loud. The words are scratchy where they stick inside his throat, so he swallows down the cough with a mouthful of soup. "I don't know. He just says that he misses me. Maybe it's more surprising that he didn't hunt me down earlier."  
  
Minho doesn't speak.  
  
"I know. I told him we can't do this often."  
  
"Maybe it'd be okay to tell your..."  
  
Jinki just shakes his head and Minho leaves the rest unsaid.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
That night, when Jinki jolts awake, Minho isn't lying next to him in bed. He gets out from under the covers and grabs a cardigan, doing his best to soften his footsteps. Peaking out into the hallway, he finds the bathroom lights off. And so easing the door just a little bit wider, he slips out and makes his way toward the living room.  
  
  
At first, he doesn't even find Minho in the darkness.  
  
He just sees a cobalt blue circle that rises into the air and flips—once, twice, three times—till it aligns. And next to it is a blue-green circle, the color familiar to the point that it steals his breath away.  
  
  
  
The second one is Minho's proto-lens.  
  
He knows because he has its twin tucked away in his drawer. It's sort of funny. They're partners in name, but as far as reality is concerned, Minho is a leaper who doesn't need a mapper to navigate and he's a mapper who doesn't need a leaper to do the piloting. So maybe they've got it all wrong. Maybe they've been getting it wrong from the very beginning.  
  
  
  
  
 _I love you._  
  
 _I love you too._  
  
  
  
  
But being in love or not, being together or not—they're separate things.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
By the time Jinki gets up the next morning, Minho has already gone off to work. He finds a bowl of rice porridge and a small dish of pickled radish and cold beansprouts on the kitchen table.  
  
  
He waits. He gathers up the courage and waits.  
  
The sun goes down a bit earlier than yesterday. And then he bundles himself into his jacket and scarf and goes up to the rooftop. Their apartment building isn't nearly tall enough to give him an unobstructed view the sky, but he knows from previous years that it's enough for him to make out a bit of the Swifts' flyby. Just a bit, but that's enough.  
  
  
He waits.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
But midnight comes and goes, and this year, the sky remains dark.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Jinki lets himself into the apartment, he's jerked roughly forward into a suffocating embrace. The door slams shut behind him and those arms around him lock down even more tightly.  
  
"Where were you? Where did you go? Why didn't you leave a note?"  
  
  
Jinki lets himself stay still for a moment.  
  
  
"Happy birthday, Minho."  
  
"What?"  
  
Jinki pushes away and smiles at him. "Or well, I guess it's happy belated birthday now."  
  
Minho stares at him. Straight at him. Jinki vaguely notes that it's been a while since they've looked each other in the eye. He reaches out to grab Minho's hand. A breath in, a breath out. See? It's not so hard.  
  
  
"I think we should talk."  
  
Minho tenses up. "About what?"  
  
Jinki pulls him to their beaten up couch and presses him into it. Then he sits down next to him, legs and arms neatly arranged. He looks around their small empty living room as if he were seeing everything for the first time.  
  
"Talk about what?" Minho repeats, full of anxiety. Does he know? Has he found out?  
  
"I think..." And he goes quiet after that.  
  
  
Minho's mind shifts into overdrive as he scrambles to think of the best way to admit the mess he'd made of their finances. The best way to explain why he'd kept it a secret and how he's going to fix it. The best way to ask for forgiveness.  
  
  
"I—"  
  
"Let's break up."  
  
  
Minho's heart lurches to a stop.  
  
  
"Jinki, what—"  
  
"I think we should." He blinks and looks straight ahead.  
  
"What are you talking about?" Minho's voice jumps up a few pitches out of incredulity.  
  
"I think it would do both of us good—"  
  
"But you told me _yesterday_ that you _love_ me!"  
  
Jinki's fingers curl up where they lay in his lap.  
  
Minho leaps onto his feet and shouts it out this time: "You said it! Just yesterday you said you love me!"  
  
Jinki flinches but doesn't take it back.  
  
"I know—"  
  
"You said it! You _said_..."  
  
  
Jinki watches Minho's chest rise and fall as the other man struggles to find the right words. His fingers are tingling. It's something called fear, he knows.  
  
  
"This is _bullshit_!" Minho roars with angry bitter laughter. "It's my birthday! It's my _fucking birthday_! So you disappear without a word and then come back and tell me this?! You can't do this! You, don't get, to do this, to me!"  
  
"Minho—"  
  
"What gives you the right?! Huh? Why? Why now? We've been together for eleven fucking years! We worked hard every single year for _eleven_ years. Aren't they supposed to mean something to you?"  
  
"They _do_ , Minho, they do." His vowels drag as he tries keep his voice under control.  
  
"Seven and a half years ago, they were going to let you die, but I couldn't." Minho jabs a finger at his chest. "I couldn't do that so I wrestled you back. If there are things such as souls in this world, then I sold mine back then. And maybe I sold yours too— _I'm sorry_ —but it's not something I can regret if it means having you. I didn't do all of that for you to leave me!"  
  
"That's not—"  
  
" _Then tell me what is wrong!_ "  
  
  
  
  
  
"Maybe...maybe it sounds stupid but you're a swift Minho." Jinki holds his left hand in his right. "I clipped your wings but you're still a swift."  
  
  
  
  
  
"I don't understand what you're talking about."  
  
"You think about it a lot don't you?"  
  
"About _what_?"  
  
"About the sky. About space." Jinki pushes the words off his tongue, feeling all the courage that he has built up quietly slipping away. "A-about flying."  
  
Minho stares at him, eyes wide, as if he were speaking some foreign language.  
  
"You can still fly, you know. Ever since I met you, I've known that you were meant—"  
  
" _Bullshit._ "  
  
  
Minho doesn't yell it out this time. It simply hangs in the air as a whisper. But no matter how much Jinki opens his mouth and tries to get the rest of his sentence out, there is no sound.  
  
  
"So is this how much you think of me?"  
  
Jinki feels his breaths turn shallow.  
  
"Is _THIS_ how much you think of _me_?" Minho repeats, louder this time. "Is this how much you think of _yourself_? Is this how much you think of _us_? All this time we've been together... Lee Jinki do I even know who you are? And do you even know who I am?! Look at me! Have a fucking good look at me!!"  
  
Jinki tries to hide himself behind his arms, but the left half of him refuses to cooperate and the width of a single arm doesn't make for much of a shelter.  
  
"The sky, space, flying—I gave up all of that _years_ ago."  
  
Jinki can't help the whimper that escapes his lips.  
  
  
"I GAVE UP ALL OF THAT! YOU _KNOW_ THAT! I GAVE IT ALL UP! _ALL_ OF IT!"  
  
  
Minho's cry rips right through him, a bullet through paper, and the remaining bits of his tattered courage flee. As he scrambles for the safety of the bedroom, his left leg barely keeping pace with his right, he wills himself not to hear what comes next. Because deep in his heart he knows exactly what's next. He knows it like the back of his hand, word for word, and it's what he has been afraid of. No no no, he's not going to let Minho say it now, not when he's not ready anymore.  
  
  
  
Minho watches him disappear. The world suddenly tilts on its axis.  
  
  
  
Folding in upon himself with both arms wrapped around his head, he grits his teeth through the pain. "I gave it all up I gave it all up I gave it all up for you. For _you_."  
  
  
  
  
Like a fish on land, he gasps for air.  
  
  
  
  
 _I gave it all up for you. Don't you ever think of why?_  
  
  
  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

 

  
  
  
  
A bleary-eyed Jonghyun throws out a few expletives about his Saturday morning peace and quiet before he finally yanks open his front door to find a haggard Minho on his doorstep. The man's eyes are bloodshot, a little hollow, nested in a bed of deep shadows. His hair is uncombed and his face unshaven.  
  
A few seconds' pause later, he says: "Well you look like shit."  
  
Minho silently pushes past him to get inside. Jonghyun yawns and scratches his stomach, trailing after the taller man as he makes his way to the kitchen.  
  
"I mean it. You actually look like shit. What happened? Shouldn't you be cuddling in bed?"  
  
Minho slams the milk down on the counter. A second slam follows as the fridge door swings shut. Jonghyun is suddenly more awake. He grabs the cereal and quietly hands it over.  
  
"Did you even get any sleep?"  
  
The cereal box slips out of Minho's fingers and scatters its contents across the otherwise immaculate tiles. Jonghyun's Skrubba-EV nudges past his legs to start cleaning up the mess, whirring and making vague noises of disapproval. Minho doesn't notice and just keeps his eyes fixated on the space in his hand where the box had been.  
  
Very carefully, Jonghyun asks: "Did you get kicked out or something?"  
  
Minho lifts his gaze. And then he wobbles.  
  
Jonghyun reaches out on instinct to steady him by the elbow but ends up with an armful of Minho instead. The unexpected weight knocks him a few steps back. Grunting, he struggles to get a better hold of his friend.  
  
"Whoa hey Minho. Minho?"  
  
He feels Minho's arms wrap about his middle.  
  
"Minho, did he find out? Did you...tell him?" Jonghyun tries to maneuver them over to the table so he can sit his friend down in a chair. "Is this because of what I said? Did you tell him because I said you should talk to him? I'm sorry, I didn't know he'd react like this."  
  
Minho just shakes his head and clings onto Jonghyun.  
  
  
  
He cries then.  
  
He couldn't cry all night, but he cries then, in Jonghyun's arms.  
  
  
  
The shorter man awkwardly pats his head. "I—I guess it would be bad timing to tell you that someone's interested in verifying the authenticity of your proto-lenses? Well not yours but the lenses that you said belonged to some dead you-know-whatever's captain. The guy is willing to pay a hefty sum and getting yourself out of debt is the first step toward fixing things with Jinki, right?"  
  
It doesn't coax a response out of Minho.  
  
"Um okay, bad timing. We'll get you better first and then talk later. Do you want my bed? A body pillow? Hot soup? Ice cream? The unspilled cereal?"  
  
Still no response.  
  
Jonghyun begins to rub circles into Minho's back. "It'll be okay. It'll turn out okay. He loves you to bits and you chose him over flying and over Novus. You guys are like...like...a fish and its gills. The fish wouldn't be alive without the gills and the gills would be pointless without the fish...or something... So—so why don't you go get some rest? I bet he'll be running down my door and demanding I give you back to him in no time."  
  
  
  
So Minho goes to sleep.  
  
He goes to sleep and dreams of the first time he ever flies the simulation unit at the academy. He dreams of Jinki waiting for him when he completes his mission and gets out. He dreams of saying _I'm back_ as if he'd actually gone somewhere far, far away, and then Jinki laughs and indulges him and says, _welcome back_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki falls into a dreamless sleep as the sky whitens. He wakes up an hour later to an empty apartment.  
  
He doesn't get dressed. He doesn't clean himself up. He doesn't eat. He just spends the entire day huddled in the corner of the couch that he had occupied the night before. He waits—he's good at that—and he waits. But Minho doesn't come home and at one point, he falls asleep.  
  
Some time during the night he wakes up with a pain in his side, so he straightens out his aching limbs and limps his way to the kitchen. There are still some leftovers from Friday and he eats that cold. He's three mouthfuls into it when the pain gets worse and he makes a run for the bathroom. But of course, his body is not meant for running so he barely avoids a collision with the wall. Lying in the middle of the hallway, shaking, he throws up what he just ate. The heaving doesn't stop though. It doesn't even when there's nothing left in his stomach.  
  
He digs his nails into his left elbow, deep enough to draw blood.  
  
  
And then he falls asleep again.  
  
  
  
  
  
When he wakes up slightly past noon, he pushes himself off the floor and goes to the bathroom. He cleans himself up, and then cleans up the mess he'd made. Sorting through their belongings, he separates his from Minho's and puts it all in a corner of the living room. There isn't much, but with the tremors running through his arms, he doesn't think he has it in him to bring them anywhere. He sets down the proto-lens in his care on the kitchen table. Next to that metal case, he puts down his phone, and next to it, he leaves the bank card Taemin had given him.  
  
Pulling on a sweater and then his jacket and boots, he grabs his scarf and Taemin's mittens and heads out. He locks the door and then, one by one, he takes the keys off the keyring. He pushes each into the crack under the door until they've all disappeared.  
  
  
So it ends like this.  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki walks out into the sunset. And he keeps on walking, through the snow, the people. He walks until his legs almost give out. A passerby asks if he's okay and helps him to a bench, so he sits there and stares at the toy store across the street. He watches the strangers, the mothers and fathers, the kids. Things that he once had, things he would have had, could have had, might have had. He watches the festive lights that come on up and down the street till it doesn't seem to matter that the sun is gone. He hears people laughing and there's a store that's playing Christmas classics. Someone is singing about snow and mistletoes and presents on the tree. But what if all he's got are homes that he can't return to?  
  
The mines, he decides. He'll go to the mines.  
  
  
Just then, a man who'd been walking by doubles back. "Lee Jinki...?"  
  
He tenses at the mention of his name.  
  
"It is you!" The other man tugs the mask off his incredulous face.  
  
"Ki...bum?"  
  
"Are you okay? You don't look so good."  
  
Jinki feels a warm hand on his face and something inside of him crumbles.  
  
  
  
"Kibum, I'm tired. I'm just tired."  
  
  
  
He tries to stand up but then the world goes black.  
  
  
  


 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided that I won't revise this story as much as I'd once had ambitions too. It's just been too long.

  
  
  
  
  
When Minho finally pulls himself together enough to go back home, it is Monday. But this supposed pulling together is more necessity than it is anything else, because Monday means he has work, and he can't afford to get fired. So he is left with no choice but to go home and grab his things, a change of work clothes too. (Jonghyun owns dress shirts and ties and suits, but the sleeves and pantlegs are too short. Minho tries them on anyway and the only comment Jonghyun has is _shut up_.)  
  
He takes a deep breath and slips the key into the lock. He'll be quick and quiet about this, in and out. Maybe he doesn't even have to wake Jinki up.  
  
Something is a little off to him when he has a harder time pushing the door open than usual. And then he sees them, the keys on the floor. _No_. His insides go cold. _No no no_. He runs straight for the bedroom and finds the door wide open, the bed made and empty. He turns to the living room and spots Jinki's belongings in the corner. At least his things are still here. That means he's coming back, right? But then what do the keys mean? His mind is a mess before he even sets foot in the kitchen. And yet it is on the kitchen table that he sees what he least wants to.  
  
  
  
  
"Jonghyun?"

 

He can't help how small he sounds.

 

"He's—" The word lodges in his throat and he tries again. "He's gone."

 

There's a coldness that twists inside his guts.

  
  
"I don't know, Jjong. Fuck, I don't know..."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki opens his eyes to find a different ceiling. For a few seconds he's lost, but the pounding in his head forces him to stop trying to remember.  
  
"Dear guest, would you like some water?"  
  
Startled, his head snaps to the right to find an Omni-AD beside his bed. Croaking out a thank you, he pushes himself a little upright and takes the proffered glass. It soothes his throat but his stomach is empty and burning.  
  
"Would you like some chicken noodle soup?"  
  
"Who's your owner?"  
  
"It's Mister Kim Kibum, sir. Would you like some chicken noodle soup?"  
  
"Omni, go clean up the kitchen. I've got the soup." Jinki hears the voice before he sees the man it belongs to. Kibum comes in with a bowl balanced in his hands. He's familiar to Jinki and strange to him at the same time.  
  
"We have three packets of crackers left. Would you like me to fetch them?"  
  
"Omni, kitchen, now." Kibum sets the bowl down on the nightstand.  
  
"I was just trying to be helpful, sir." Omni raises his long arms.  
  
"More like you don't want to wash the pot."  
  
"May I suggest you acquire a Vaska-EV, sir?"  
  
"And return you to the store while I'm at it? Sure, I don't mind."  
  
"I promise you'll never see a shinier pot, sir." Omni backs out of the room.  
  
Kibum pulls up a chair and starts stirring the soup. "Don't mind Omni. I had him programmed this way. Purposely bickering with your domestic humanoid may seem odd, but well—" he makes a face "—never mind."  
  
Jinki looks around, at the walls, the furniture, the duvet covering him. He looks at Kibum, sitting there and blowing over a spoonful of soup, preparing to feed him as if it were the most natural thing to do. The younger man has pink highlights in his side-swept blonde bangs now and that's something Jinki thinks will take him time to get used to, but somehow Kibum makes it seem like they really never became more than three floors apart. Three floors—the blood drains from his face.  
  
"Jinki? Are you okay? Are you feeling worse all of a sudden?"  
  
"This place..."  
  
"I moved here five years ago, don't worry." Kibum reassures him. "But I still run into your parents sometimes. They're doing well. Taemin too."  
  
Jinki hesitates. He's not sure if there's an accusation in there somewhere. But Kibum only stares steadily back so he tries on a watery smile and tips his chin. "I—I know. I saw him a few days ago."  
  
He reaches for the bowl but Kibum moves it away.  
  
"Open your mouth."  
  
"I have hands, Kibum."  
  
"That's great! So do I." He doesn't point out the flaw with Jinki's argument. "Now shut up and open your mouth. I don't want the soup going down the wrong pipe."  
  
Jinki looks at him and isn't sure what to feel.  
  
"Mouth, open, now."  
  
  
Once the entire contents of that bowl is sitting warmly inside Jinki's stomach, Kibum hollers for Omni. The humanoid trudges into the room and grudgingly accepts the bowl and spoon along with his new task of washing them. After he leaves, the silence doesn't last long before Kibum breaks it.  
  
  
"Look, I know you don't have a thing on you except for your clothes and a bit of cash. What's going on?"  
  
Jinki looks away and crosses his right arm a little defensively over his torso, hand reaching for his left elbow. What he doesn't foresee is Kibum's hand shooting out and grabbing his wrist. He tries to resist it but Kibum has always been stronger than he looks.  
  
"I saw the nail marks on your arm too, so don't do that anymore."  
  
He turns away from Kibum and shrinks into himself.  
  
"Stop hiding. This isn't like you."  
  
"But I _am_ like this." He buries his face into his left shoulder, right arm still outstretched and locked in Kibum's grasp.  
  
"I don't know what happened back then, but I don't care about back then. I care about right now. What is going on with you right now? Why did I find you sitting on a bench like that? No keys, no phone, not even enough money to get yourself a night's worth of shelter. What were you going to do? Where were you going to go?"  
  
"I don't know..."  
  
"If you're like this then obviously you didn't just lose your things."  
  
"I don't know, I don't know..."  
  
"I'm not asking you to explain why you're alive, Jinki. You're alive and that's good enough for me." Kibum moves to sit on the bed and drags the other man closer to him. "I've known you ever since I became old enough to keep the memories I made. I fixed your horrible art projects because you can't coordinate colors and you wrote my essays. We built our homebase together. Things changed somewhat after you enrolled at the aviation academy and we started talking less, but you didn't become less to me because of that. Maybe I never said it, but it's true."  
  
Jinki's cheeks are wet and his heart aches even more when he feels a thumb brush gently over the knob of his wrist.  
  
"And then I went to your funeral. I bawled my eyes out. I spread your ashes and I said my goodbye. I nearly drove into an oncoming hovercar and scared my mother witless. But if it doesn't end with that, then let me be your friend again."  
  
There's fear and there's shame and there's all this suffocating ugliness.  
  
But Kibum stays. He gives him room to cry for a while, no words of comfort, no hug, just that one steadfast hand circling his wrist.  
  
  
  
"I'm just...tired."  
  
"You said that right before you passed out on me. What are you tired of?"  
  
"...Of-of myself?"  
  
"You're not the way you used to be, but that doesn't stop you from being something."  
  
"But what am I?"  
  
"You're Jinki."  
  
"Not who but _what_? Kibum, I can't walk quickly and I can't walk far, much less do anything else on my feet. If I want to grab something and it's too high up, I can't even climb up on a chair to get it, because I'll probably fall and crack my head open. Again. I can move my left arm but I can't hold a cup without dropping it five seconds later. I can't do the dishes, I can't cook, I can barely spread jam onto bread. I can eat but can I put food on the table and feed myself? Not really. I only have half of my hearing left so even if a hovercar is barreling down on me I wouldn't know which direction it's coming from until I see it with my eyes. But well, usually that's not a problem because I can't even go outside. I'm un-Marked, Kibum, I'm a ghost. As far as the system is concerned, I'm not even human. I'm like Omni, except worse, because I can't even do a tenth of the things that he does..."  
  
Kibum lets him talk till he gradually false asleep. Then he tucks him in properly and goes to his study to make a call.  
  
  
"Lee Taemin, you know your brother is alive, don't you?"  
  
  
"You're going to find me Choi Minho's exact address or so help me Jorth you'll never see another sunrise."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Minho finds Jonghyun by the front door so he knows he didn't hallucinate the noises. His heart begins to soar, but then he realizes the door is closed and there is no one else around. His footsteps slow.  
  
"Jonghyun?"  
  
His friend remains frozen.  
  
"Jjong? Was there someone—"  
  
The shorter man turns around, looking dazed, one side of face redder than the other.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I heard knocking at the door so I went to open it. I mean, you were asleep so I thought I should get the door. What if it's Jinki, right?" Jonghyun rubs at his smarting cheek. "But no, it wasn't him. It was some guy I'd never seen before, a man, kinda tall, brown tweed jacket, yellow scarf, wearing a bowler hat. He's got blond and pink hair. Strange colors, huh! His expression was absolutely terrifying—"  
  
"Jjong what did he want?"  
  
"He asked me if you lived here and I said yes, then he slapped me, yanked the door out of my hand, and slammed it shut." Jonghyun recounts the events with a frown as if he can't be sure what had just happened. "Do you get strange visitors like this often?"  
  
Minho pushes past him and runs out the door. The hallway is empty so he dashes downstairs, ignoring his friend's demands to know where he's going. He even runs out of the building, but he doesn't see a single person matching the description. And then the biting cold finally gets to him.  
  
When he gets back upstairs, he grabs onto Jonghyun like a lifeline. "Describe him to me. What did he look like?"  
  
"I told you, brown tweed—"  
  
"His face, damn it. His face!"  
  
"Uh..." the shorter man squirms uncomfortably. "His eyes are a little narrow. Sort of long and narrow? Goes up in the corners like this. And he's missing a bit of his eyebrow here. And...and, uh, cheekbones? Well, I didn't exactly get a very good look before he turned violent."  
  
"And you said he asked specifically for me? And he wore a bowler hat?"  
  
"Yeah. So you know this guy or something?"  
  
Minho's eyes stop focusing on Jonghyun and a second later he's in the kitchen flipping through the contact list of Jinki's phone. When he doesn't find what's looking for there, he goes into Jinki's call history and dials a call to the very last number.  
  
"Taemin! Taemin?" He yells without meaning to. "Your brother had a friend named Kim Ki something right? The one with an eyebrow scar and likes strange hats?"  
  
  
  
  


 


	12. Chapter 12

 

  
  
  
  
Kibum reaches home before he has thoughts and emotions sorted out and as he's pulling his laces loose, he pauses and frowns. Something feels a little off. It doesn't take long for him to realize that Jinki is gone. He ate his food, he took his medicine, he even made the bed and folded the pajama set Kibum had lent him. But Jinki's gone, his jacket, his scarf, his boots.  
  
"Omni!"  
  
"Yes, sir?" The humanoid peaks out from the bathroom.  
  
"Where is Jinki?"  
  
"The guest, sir?"  
  
"Yes, where did he go?"  
  
"He said he's feeling better and wants to go for a walk."  
  
"And you let him?!"  
  
"Was I not supposed to, sir?"  
  
"Omni you're a _fucking idiot_!" Kibum spins around on his heels and goes right back out.  
  
He holds onto the hope that maybe Omni isn't so stupid, that maybe Jinki was telling the truth and really is around here somewhere. But no matter how many times he circles around his neighborhood, Jinki is nowhere to be found. Jorth, what was he expecting? Jinki being the way he is, why would he want to go for a walk of all things?  
  
He goes back to where he found Jinki yesterday and he sits down on the same bench, next to the spot where Jinki had sat. No matter how he tries to act, the years have made them into strangers. He's not sure how Jinki thinks anymore. Where could he have gone?  
  
Kibum's phone rings then and he allows himself half a sigh of relief before he realizes Jinki doesn't have a phone on him and doesn't know his number, not since he changed it a few years back.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Is this Kim Kibum? Jinki's friend?"  
  
Kibum pauses, and then narrows his eyes, quietly swearing to skin Taemin alive. "Choi Minho."  
  
"You know where Jinki is, don't you?"  
  
"I don't know. Where is he?"  
  
"Tell me where he is!"  
  
"Don't _you_ fucking yell at _me_!"  
  
"He's with you isn't he?!"  
  
"I don't have time to deal with bastards like you."  
  
Kibum hangs up and gets to his feet. His phone rings again, but he turns it off. Gnawing on his lip, he has thought of one last place where he can look for Jinki. He prays he is right as much as he prays he is wrong. Because the very thought of what Jinki could do there makes him sick to his stomach.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
And it's like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago. He and Changsun are throwing rocks down the mine shaft, counting out the seconds to see when there would be a noise in order to figure out how deep it goes. And Kibum, Kibum's always yelling at them to get away because if they lose their footing, they may really end up personally seeing how deep the shaft runs. Look, even now, Kibum's calling out to him even now...  
  
"Yah Lee Jinki!"  
  
And then there are arms winding around him, pulling him away. And Jinki lets it happen, lets the arms drag him back until they fall together. He's lying on something soft, and those hands, they are tugging at him, touching his face. Someone somewhere is crying. He doesn't know who and doesn't know where until the hands move him around and he is staring up at Kibum's wet face.  
  
Kibum holds on to him until it leaves both of them in pain. And Kibum cries. Hard and ugly.  
  
  
Jinki nudges his cheek against Kibum's stomach, and quietly, he says: "I couldn't do it, Bums. I couldn't do it after all."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It's nighttime and they're lying in bed together, shoulder to shoulder, foot by foot, hand in hand.  
  
They begin with the earliest memories that they have of each other. And then all the subsequent memories throughout their childhood and adolescent years. They comb through everything, even the mundane, down to the smallest details. Sometimes they accuse each other of making things up, sometimes they just listen to each other quietly and try to picture what it had been like. Kibum tells Jinki about his life now, what has happened in the past few years, the relationships that he'd started but had to end. Eventually Jinki tells Kibum what happened too.  
  
"So this Jonghyun is a friend?"  
  
"A friend."  
  
"And you ran away from home because you tried breaking up with Minho."  
  
Jinki makes a soft noise.  
  
"Jinki?"  
  
Kibum gets a squeeze on his hand.  
  
"Don't you ever make me attend your funeral again."  
  
Silence.  
  
"You're a lot more than what you make yourself out to be."  
  
Kibum turns his head in Jinki's direction. In the dark, he can make out the tight downward turn of the corners of the other man's mouth, the glimmer reflecting off the whites of his eyes.  
  
"And sometimes you don't know what you mean to other people without talking to them. You need to talk to people, Jinx. You need to learn to do that. It's not fair for you to not care about their feelings. Or, well, our feelings."  
  
"But Minho's meant for something better."  
  
"And how do you know he'd be better if he didn't have you?"  
  
"He's meant to fly. You have no idea how _happy_ it makes him."  
  
"But you make him happier."  
  
"I don't think I have in years, Kibum."  
  
"Minho's a full-grown man. It's only natural that he has worries and not everything is your fault. This is why I said you need to talk to people. You won't know what's wrong with him and you can't help him with it if you don't talk to him."  
  
"It's just...you can't deny it. I made his life harder."  
  
"He chose you over flying. However much flying means to him, you mean more. So don't go dismissing your own weight because that really hurts."  
  
"I saw him with his proto-lens. He misses it. I know he misses it. And I know he hates his job right now."  
  
"Jinki, everyone has to do things that they don't like and don't want to in order to have something they do like and do want. Nobody gets their way all the time and nobody is happy all the time. But isn't it a good feeling to come home to someone you love? To know you have something there, something that makes it all better?"  
  
"But you don't understand how good of a leaper he makes. If he has the chance to go to Novus and—"  
  
"And what? Fly long, difficult missions? Earn lots of money? Get famous? And then?"  
  
"He'll find someone who doesn't need him to give up—"  
  
"Jinx, tell me again what you did in your fourth year at the academy."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You switched programs. You set yourself back two years. You chose him over flying, because you wanted to be with him."  
  
"But it's not the same. Even if I did that we were still going to—"  
  
"You told him _it's not called giving up, Minho, I'm trading in one dream for something even bigger_. Don't you see it?" Kibum pushes. "He understood you back then, or maybe he didn't and just chose to trust you. But either way, why can't you do the same for him?"  
  
Jinki tries to pull away but Kibum doesn't let him.  
  
"Novus is nice and all but it isn't the world, Jinx, so it isn't the end of the world either. And Novus isn't _his_ world." He pauses. " _You_ are."  
  
Kibum feels him shaking.  
  
  
"Lee Jinki, you are a fucking idiot."  
  
  
Kibum finally pulls him into an embrace. "I'm using my saved up holidays to take the rest of this month off, so stay with me. I'll get Omni to break out the cookbooks. We're going to have a feast everyday. Not only that, we're going to sing Christmas carols every waking moment of every day till you throw up just thinking about them. And we're also going to go out and shop and spoil ourselves till my apartment runs out of space for new things."  
  
  
"And then when you're ready, you're going to go talk to him and you're going to tell him you love him."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Taemin!"  
  
The younger man jumps with a start. As soon as he sees Minho, he promptly turns around and begins speed walking in the other direction. His speed walk soon turns into a run, but the number of people out on the sidewalk means he doesn't get very far before a large hand clamps down on his shoulder and pulls him aside into an alleyway.  
  
"Let me go. I'm going to scream for help!" Taemin shrinks against the wall. He'd successfully avoided everyone for the past five days, even going as far as borrowing Jongin's phone so he can turn his off.  
  
"Don't. I just want to talk to you."  
  
"Yeah, well I don't want to talk to you." There is a tremor in his voice and he refuses to meet Minho's gaze.  
  
"I'm not going to ask where Jinki is."  
  
"What you're giving up?" Taemin lifts his head then. But he realizes what he's doing and drops his head again.  
  
"Just tell me if he's okay."  
  
Taemin's foot edges a little to one side.  
  
"Taemin..."  
  
"Y-yeah, he is."  
  
"That's good. I'm glad. And I have another thing I want to ask you."  
  
"What?" Taemin glances at him nervously.  
  
"This." Minho pulls the bank card out of his wallet and shoves it under Taemin's nose. "It has your Mark imprint on it but it also has my name. Your brother left it behind. What is this and what doesn't it mean?"  
  
"I-it's money."  
  
"What money?"  
  
"The money that you've been sending over for him every month."  
  
"What?" Minho is stunned.  
  
"Mum and dad gave it to me. I didn't want to use it. He worked hard to earn all of it, so I couldn't."  
  
"But why did you give it back to him now?"  
  
"Because..." Taemin shifts as discreetly closer to the mouth of the alley as he can. "I got licensed as a mapper and my partner and I have contracted with the Novus State. We got ourselves five years on the Cadens to Iuno route. So we're relocating to Second Earth soon and we'll be settling on Cadens-3 in the new year."  
  
"And this is why you asked to meet with him." Minho doesn't blink.  
  
"I wouldn't break a promise unless I had to."  
  
"Okay, okay..." Minho nods even though he hasn't digested all of it. "And one last thing—I promise it's the last thing—you know where your brother is? You can go see him right?"  
  
Taemin tenses, alarmed.  
  
"Don't bolt!" Minho hurriedly says. "I-I just have something I want you to give to him."  
  
"I can't. You're gonna get me into trouble with Kib—" Taemin shuts himself up.  
  
"Just say it's a birthday present. Or a Christmas present. Please?"  
  
"Well wh-what is it?"  
  
"It's nothing bad, I swear."  
  
Minho slowly takes a small rectangular package out of his coat pocket. It's half the size of his hand, an inch thick, wrapped in plain white paper. Taemin looks at Minho and then down at the present and then up again before he gingerly reaches out and takes the thing. He holds it for a few seconds without moving, as if he expects it to explode.  
  
But when nothing happens, he quickly stuffs into his own pocket. "Okay, I'll give it to him."  
  
"Thank you, Taemin." Minho puts on the most harmless smile he can manage. "And can you tell him, tell him..."  
  
Taemin waits but Minho doesn't speak again after he trails off.  
  
"Tell him what?" He prompts.  
  
Minho smiles again and shakes his head. "Just give him the present."  
  
  
And then Taemin is off like a rocket, vanishing into the foot traffic.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki and Kibum sit across from each other in the food court of the shopping complex. Before each of them is a bowl of steaming chikara udon. Kibum takes his chopsticks and smacks the other man across the back of his hand.  
  
"Stop looking around like you're a criminal on the run!"  
  
"Bums, I shouldn't be out in public. What if—"  
  
"There are plenty of ghosts on Jorth; they're not going to start terminating everyone when it's almost the holidays."  
  
"You're not making me feel any better."  
  
"You will feel better once you start eating!"  
  
"But—"  
  
"Don't you know that looking around like that just makes you more suspicious?"  
  
Jinki resigns and picks up his chopsticks. He has to admit that the udon smells pretty tempting. And so for a while, there is only quiet slurping. Four bites in, however, he can't help himself.  
  
"So why are we out here anyway?"  
  
Kibum glares until Jinki puts a piece of toasted rice cake in his mouth. As he is chewing, Kibum points to one side. Turning his head in that direction, Jinki wonders what exactly is he supposed to see.  
  
"See them?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Mother and daughter. Matching orange hats, hideous things."  
  
Jinki spots a woman carrying shopping bags and a little girl with a balloon in her hand. "What about them?"  
  
"The kid is happy because she got what she asked for."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"We passed by them in the magic trick supplies store."  
  
"Oh." Jinki spots the logo of the store among their bags.  
  
"And over there, four o'clock. See the boy wiping his snot all over his dad while his mom is trying to feed him?"  
  
"The one who's been crying?"  
  
"Yeah, because he couldn't have the toy robot building kit he wanted."  
  
"Okay?"  
  
"And look down."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Look down!"  
  
  
There's a package next to his bowl.  
  
  
"What is this?"  
  
"Magic."  
  
"My birthday already passed and you said you're holding onto my Christmas present till tomorrow morning..."  
  
"Open it."  
  
Jinki looks at Kibum a little skeptically before putting down his chopsticks. He turns the package over in his hands and shakes it next to his ear, but his efforts yield no clues.  
  
  
"Not everyone gets what they want, Jinx."  
  
  
The wrapping paper—or well, just simple white paper—comes off easily.  
  
  
"When you don't, it's not the end."  
  
  
There in his palm sits a very familiar metal box. His heart is in his throat.  
  
  
  
  
"And when you do, don't let go."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Minho falls onto the lumpy couch and pulls up his legs. Jonghyun went home promising he'll swing by tomorrow to check up on him, but suddenly Minho feels like maybe he should have asked him to stay. Because he's all alone now, and he feels it, that thing that gnaws away at his bones.  
  
He waits.  
  
The blue-green glow of his proto-lens keeps him company, and he waits.  
  
  
Behind the curtain, the black squares of the window turn navy. And then they brighten into lighter and lighter shades of blue. The sun is rising; it's Christmas morning, a quiet Sunday morning. He aches but he think he understands it better now, what it feels like to be small and helpless and alone. To wait and not know what will come.  
  
  
And then there's a series of knocks on the front door.  
  
And he goes to open it, as if he's been rehearsing this scene.  
  
  
  
Jinki is standing there in a new black peacoat with burnished buttons, his hair trimmed a little shorter. He's got snow all over him but his eyes are bright and his cheeks are red. Minho can feel the bones in his legs turning into water and he finds himself stuck halfway between a sob and a laugh. How do you put this feeling into words?  
  
  
  
"I'm back."  
  
  
"Welcome back." He whispers.  
  
  
"I love you."  
  
  
"I love you too." He feels the corners of his mouth tugging upward.  
  
  
"We're going to be okay."  
  
  
"Yeah."  
  
  
Minho thinks he's going to cry, but he doesn't.  
  
  
"Yeah, we'll be okay."  
  
  
  
  
  
He gave up his wings, but now he has a home.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
